How can I pass values between a Dialog and an Activity?

You can do that in different ways… actually, if your dialog has only an “OK” button to dismiss, why don’t you just create a custom dialog using the AlertDialog.Builder class instead of subclassing Dialog?

Anyway… let’s suppose you have good reasons to do it the way you did it. In that case, I’d use the ObserverPattern. Something like this:

public class CustomDialog extends Dialog  {


    private String name;
     public static EditText etName;
     public String zip;
    OnMyDialogResult mDialogResult; // the callback

    public CustomDialog(Context context, String name) {
        super(context);
        this.name = name;
    }

    @Override
    public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
        // same you have
    }

    private class OKListener implements android.view.View.OnClickListener {
        @Override
        public void onClick(View v) {
            if( mDialogResult != null ){
                mDialogResult.finish(String.valueOf(etName.getText()));
            }
            CustomDialog.this.dismiss();
        }
    }

    public void setDialogResult(OnMyDialogResult dialogResult){
        mDialogResult = dialogResult;
    }

    public interface OnMyDialogResult{
       void finish(String result);
    }
}

On your activity:

CustomDialog dialog;
// initialization stuff, blah blah
dialog.setDialogResult(new OnMyDialogResult(){
    public void finish(String result){
        // now you can use the 'result' on your activity
    }
});

Reading your code it seems you already tried something similar.

Edit: doing it the easy way

You can still use your mycustomdialog layout. And this is how you would use the AlertDialog.Builder:

LayoutInflater inflater = LayoutInflater.from(YourActivity.this);
final View yourCustomView = inflater.inflate(R.layout.mycustomdialog, null);

final TextView etName = (EditText) yourCustomView.findViewById(R.id.EditZip);
AlertDialog dialog = new AlertDialog.Builder(YourActivity.this)
    .setTitle("Enter the Zip Code")
    .setView(yourCustomView)
    .setPositiveButton("OK", new DialogInterface.OnClickListener() {
        public void onClick(DialogInterface dialog, int whichButton) {
            mSomeVariableYouHaveOnYourActivity = etName.getText().toString();
        }
    })
    .setNegativeButton("Cancel", null).create();
dialog.show();