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Java: Getting the contents of a search dialog box in text editor i am making

Hi all,
I am makinga text editor in Java :)

I am trying to implement the search function but am having problems:
I have a class called SearchDialog, which contains (amongst others) the following method:

Code:

protected String getText() {

return target.getText();

}

So therefore when one enters text in a search dialog box, the string that they enter is retrieved by this method.

Now I need to actually get this info. I am writing another method to do this. I need to get the string, and then I can use the indexOf() method to find the search string in a certain string.

So far, my method looks like this:

Code:

public void Search(){

        String searchString = searchDialog.getText();

        System.out.println("The search term is: " + searchString);

        //other command to come here, I am just testing at the moment.

    }

But I am getting this error:

Code:

non-static method getText() cannot be referenced from a static context

        String searchString = SearchDialog.getText();

                                          ^

Whats going wrong, why can't I access it? Please help!!!!

I just made everything associated with the getText() method static as wel,, and it is working.

Is this bad design? Should I be doing this a different way?

Are you using an InputDialog to get the input? If so it'll return the string entered once a button in the dialog is clicked, so you could have a method in your class

private String getSearchTerm(){

String input =null;

input=JOptionPane.showInputDialog(blah...blah...blah);

return input;
}

and you'll still be staying with the event driven notion of doing things

Are you calling the Search function from main()? If so that's not a good way of doing it and would explain the static context.

No I'm calling it from another method outside of main.

The problem is, we are'nt allowed to modify the code the lecturer gave us for the SearchDialog class too much.
I just added the static flags and now it works fine. Can't see whats wrong with doing that!