getText and java.lang.NullPointerException

[peahead]

I have a database connection which works well when using static final Strings, i.e. DATABASE_NAME = "test";

I want to make this a little more dynamic so I created a text box on my JFrame

		txtDBName = new JTextField();
		txtDBName.setText("");

Then I created a method to return the String of txtDBName as follows:

    public String getDatabaseName() 
    { 
          return txtDBName.getText().trim(); 
    }

I then want to use the value in txtDBName as the name of my database in my connection string as follows:

conn=DriverManager.getConnection(dbView.DATABASE_URL + dbView.getDatabaseName() , username, password);

I also tried the following without any luck

conn=DriverManager.getConnection(dbView.DATABASE_URL + dbView.txtDBName.getText(), username, password);

but I keep getting a nullPointerException

Can someone shed some light on this for me?

Thanks

[peahead]

It's okay - I figured it out. I was calling the getText value in the wrong place