Get dynamic element by ID

I have a portion of my layout that is dynamically generated via js. From within main I create a new instance of the object and pass it the views that I would like to generate dynamically. The following is about the simplest example I can create.

main.js

var dynamicContent = new dynamicContent($.dynamicHeader,$.dynamicContent,$.dynamicFooter,$);

dynamicContent.js

function dynamicContent(header,content,footer,main){
    var main = main;
    footer.add(createButton("back_footer","0%","100%","100%",close));
    disableButton("back_footer");
 
    function createButton(id,left,width,height,callBackFunction){
            var button = Ti.UI.createButton({
                    callBackFunction: callBackFunction,
                    left: left,
                    width: width,
                    height: height,
                    id: id,
                    enabled: true,
                    backgroundColor: Alloy.Globals.bColor,
                    backgroundSelectedColor: Alloy.Globals.bsColor
             });
            button.addEventListener('click', function(){
                    if(enabled)
                        this.callBackFunction();
            });
            return button;
        }
 
    function close(){
    //this contains code to close something
    }
 
    function disableButton(id){
        main.id.enabled = false;
        main.id.backgroundColor = Alloy.Globals.bGray;
        main.id.backgroundSelectedColor = Alloy.Globals.bGray; 
    }
}

Since I'm not in main.js "$" is not defined so I pass it in object creation. The problem is I cannot access the items by "id" as they are undefined in the "$" scope, so calling "disableButton("back_footer");" throws undefined. Are items only added to the "$" if they are created via xml?

Is there a way for me to access these dynamic elements other than hard coding them into a variable? If I can't find a good solution I guess I will resort to pushing them onto an array and incrementing through it until I find the one that I want to modify. While that will work it doesn't seem like the correct solution...