How to get text from EditText?

If you are doing it before the setContentView() method call, then the values will be null.

This will result in null:

super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);

Button btn = (Button)findViewById(R.id.btnAddContacts);
String text = (String) btn.getText();

setContentView(R.layout.main_contacts);

while this will work fine:

super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
setContentView(R.layout.main_contacts);

Button btn = (Button)findViewById(R.id.btnAddContacts);
String text = (String) btn.getText();

The quickest solution to your problem I believe is that you simply are missing parentheses on your getText. Simply add () to edit.getText().toString() and that should solve it

Place the following after the setContentView() method.

final EditText edit =  (EditText) findViewById(R.id.Your_Edit_ID);
String emailString = (String) edit.getText().toString();
Log.d("email",emailString);

Well, it depends on your needs. Very often I keep my references to widgets in activity (as a class fields) - and set them in onCreate method. I think that is a good idea
Probably the reason for your nulls is that you are trying to call findViewById() before you set contentView() in your onCreate() method - please check that.