Espresso - get text of element

If I have an "AppCompatTextView" element that I can access by:

onView(withId(R.id.allergies_text))

From Layout Inspector:

Is there a way I can access the text of the element in Android Studio? (to access whatever text is there... not check if some text exists in the element)

I tried to do:

val tv = onView(withId(R.id.medical_summary_text_view)) as TextView
val text = text.text.toString()
print(text)

But I get the error:

android.support.test.espresso.ViewInteraction cannot be cast to android.widget.TextView

You should create a matcher to access to that element value.

For instance, you can check if it's text has some value:

Matcher<View> hasValueEqualTo(final String content) {

    return new TypeSafeMatcher<View>() {

        @Override
        public void describeTo(Description description) {
            description.appendText("Has EditText/TextView the value:  " + content);
        }

        @Override
        public boolean matchesSafely(View view) {
            if (!(view instanceof TextView) && !(view instanceof EditText)) {
                    return false;
            }
            if (view != null) {
                String text;
                if (view instanceof TextView) {
                    text = ((TextView) view).getText().toString();
                } else {
                    text = ((EditText) view).getText().toString();
                }

                return (text.equalsIgnoreCase(content));
            }
            return false;
        }
    };
}

And call it this way:

onView(withId(R.id.medical_summary_text_view))
    .check(matches(hasValueEqualTo(value)));

or you can edit this matcher to return just whether the text is empty or not:

Matcher<View> textViewHasValue() {

    return new TypeSafeMatcher<View>() {

        @Override
        public void describeTo(Description description) {
            description.appendText("The TextView/EditText has value");
        }

        @Override
        public boolean matchesSafely(View view) {
            if (!(view instanceof TextView) && !(view instanceof EditText)) {
                    return false;
            }
            if (view != null) {
                String text;
                if (view instanceof TextView) {
                    text = ((TextView) view).getText().toString();
                } else {
                    text = ((EditText) view).getText().toString();
                }

                return (!TextUtils.isEmpty(text));
            }
            return false;
        }
    };
}

And call it this way:

onView(withId(R.id.medical_summary_text_view))
    .check(matches(textViewHasValue()));