I am trying out Kotlin Coroutines and Flow for the first time and I am trying to reproduce a certain flow I use on Android with RxJava with an MVI-ish approach, but I am having difficulties getting it right and I am essentially stuck at this point.
The RxJava app looks essentially like this:
MainActivityView.kt
object MainActivityView {
sealed class Event {
object OnViewInitialised : Event()
}
data class State(
val renderEvent: RenderEvent = RenderEvent.None
)
sealed class RenderEvent {
object None : RenderEvent()
class DisplayText(val text: String) : RenderEvent()
}
}
MainActivity.kt
MainActivity has an instance of a PublishSubject with a Event type. Ie MainActivityView.Event.OnViewInitialised, MainActivityView.Event.OnError etc. The initial Event is sent in onCreate() via the subjects's .onNext(Event) call.
@MainActivityScope
class MainActivity : AppCompatActivity(R.layout.activity_main) {
@Inject
lateinit var subscriptions: CompositeDisposable
@Inject
lateinit var viewModel: MainActivityViewModel
@Inject
lateinit var onViewInitialisedSubject: PublishSubject<MainActivityView.Event.OnViewInitialised>
override fun onCreate(savedInstanceState: Bundle?) {
super.onCreate(savedInstanceState)
setupEvents()
}
override fun onDestroy() {
super.onDestroy()
subscriptions.clear()
}
private fun setupEvents() {
if (subscriptions.size() == 0) {
Observable.mergeArray(
onViewInitialisedSubject
.toFlowable(BackpressureStrategy.BUFFER)
.toObservable()
).observeOn(
Schedulers.io()
).compose(
viewModel()
).observeOn(
AndroidSchedulers.mainThread()
).subscribe(
::render
).addTo(
subscriptions
)
onViewInitialisedSubject
.onNext(
MainActivityView
.Event
.OnViewInitialised
)
}
}
private fun render(state: MainActivityView.State) {
when (state.renderEvent) {
MainActivityView.RenderEvent.None -> Unit
is MainActivityView.RenderEvent.DisplayText -> {
mainActivityTextField.text = state.renderEvent.text
}
}
}
}
MainActivityViewModel.kt
These Event's are then picked up by a MainActivityViewModel class which is invoked by .compose(viewModel()) which then transform the received Event into a sort of a new State via ObservableTransformer<Event, State>. The viewmodel returns a new state with a renderEvent in it, which can then be acted upon in the MainActivity again via render(state: MainActivityView.State)function.
@MainActivityScope
class MainActivityViewModel @Inject constructor(
private var state: MainActivityView.State
) {
operator fun invoke(): ObservableTransformer<MainActivityView.Event, MainActivityView.State> = onEvent
private val onEvent = ObservableTransformer<MainActivityView.Event,
MainActivityView.State> { upstream: Observable<MainActivityView.Event> ->
upstream.publish { shared: Observable<MainActivityView.Event> ->
Observable.mergeArray(
shared.ofType(MainActivityView.Event.OnViewInitialised::class.java)
).compose(
eventToViewState
)
}
}
private val eventToViewState = ObservableTransformer<MainActivityView.Event, MainActivityView.State> { upstream ->
upstream.flatMap { event ->
when (event) {
MainActivityView.Event.OnViewInitialised -> onViewInitialisedEvent()
}
}
}
private fun onViewInitialisedEvent(): Observable<MainActivityView.State> {
val renderEvent = MainActivityView.RenderEvent.DisplayText(text = "hello world")
state = state.copy(renderEvent = renderEvent)
return state.asObservable()
}
}
Could I achieve sort of the same flow with coroutines/Flow/Channels? Possibly a bit simplified even?
EDIT:
I have since found a solution that works for me, I haven't found any issues thus far. However this solution uses ConflatedBroadcastChannel<T> which eventually will be deprecated, it will likely be possible to replace it with (at the time of writing) not yet released SharedFlow api (more on that here.
The way it works is that the Activity and viewmodel shares
a ConflatedBroadcastChannel<MainActivity.Event> which is used to send or offer events from the Activity (or an adapter). The viewmodel reduce the event to a new State which is then emitted. The Activity is collecting on the Flow<State> returned by viewModel.invoke(), and ultimately renders the emitted State.
MainActivityView.kt
object MainActivityView {
sealed class Event {
object OnViewInitialised : Event()
data class OnButtonClicked(val idOfItemClicked: Int) : Event()
}
data class State(
val renderEvent: RenderEvent = RenderEvent.Idle
)
sealed class RenderEvent {
object Idle : RenderEvent()
data class DisplayText(val text: String) : RenderEvent()
}
}
MainActivity.kt
class MainActivity : AppCompatActivity(R.layout.activity_main) {
@Inject
lateinit var viewModel: MainActivityViewModel
@Inject
lateinit eventChannel: ConflatedBroadcastChannel<MainActivityView.Event>
private var isInitialised: Boolean = false
override fun onCreate(savedInstanceState: Bundle?) {
super.onCreate(savedInstanceState)
init()
}
private fun init() {
if (!isInitialised) {
lifecycleScope.launch {
viewModel()
.flowOn(
Dispatchers.IO
).collect(::render)
}
eventChannel
.offer(
MainActivityView.Event.OnViewInitialised
)
isInitialised = true
}
}
private suspend fun render(state: MainActivityView.State): Unit =
when (state.renderEvent) {
MainActivityView.RenderEvent.Idle -> Unit
is MainActivityView.RenderEvent.DisplayText ->
renderDisplayText(text = state.renderEvent.text)
}
private val renderDisplayText(text: String) {
// render text
}
}
MainActivityViewModel.kt
class MainActivityViewModel constructor(
private var state: MainActivityView.State = MainActivityView.State(),
private val eventChannel: ConflatedBroadcastChannel<MainActivityView.Event>,
) {
suspend fun invoke(): Flow<MainActivityView.State> =
eventChannel
.asFlow()
.flatMapLatest { event: MainActivityView.Event ->
reduce(event)
}
private fun reduce(event: MainActivityView.Event): Flow<MainActivityView.State> =
when (event) {
MainActivityView.Event.OnViewInitialised -> onViewInitialisedEvent()
MainActivityView.Event.OnButtonClicked -> onButtonClickedEvent(event.idOfItemClicked)
}
private fun onViewInitialisedEvent(): Flow<MainActivityView.State> = flow
val renderEvent = MainActivityView.RenderEvent.DisplayText(text = "hello world")
state = state.copy(renderEvent = renderEvent)
emit(state)
}
private fun onButtonClickedEvent(idOfItemClicked: Int): Flow<MainActivityView.State> = flow
// do something to handle click
println("item clicked: $idOfItemClicked")
emit(state)
}
}
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