Although this question has been answered for the OP's case, I want to offer a solution to those receiving this error in a StatefulWidget scenario.
Consider a situation where you would want to have a list of selectable items that dictate which category to display. In this case, the constructor might look something like this:
CategoryScrollView({
this.categories,
this.defaultSelection = 0,
});
final List<String> categories;
final int defaultSelection;
Note the property defaultSelection is responsible for specifying which category should be selected by default. You would probably also want to keep track of which category is selected after initialization, so I will create selectedCategory. I want to assign selectedCategory to defaultSelection so that the default selection takes effect. In _CategoryScrollViewState, you cannot do the following:
class _CategoryScrollViewState extends State<CategoryScrollView> {
int selectedCategory = widget.defaultSelection; // ERROR
@override
Widget build(BuildContext context) {
...
}
}
The line, int selectedCategory = widget.defaultSelection; will not work because defaultSelection it hasn't been initialized yet (mentioned in other answer). Therefore, the error is raised:
The instance member 'widget' can't be accessed in an initializer.
The solution is to assign selectedCategory to defaultSelection inside of the initState method, initializing it outside of the method:
class _CategoryScrollView extends State<CategoryScrollView> {
int selectedCategory;
void initState() {
selectedCategory = widget.defaultSelection;
super.initState();
}