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Creational Design Patterns in Kotlin Android

Creational design patterns are a set of solutions to common software development problems that deal with how objects are being created. Using such patterns will ensure that your code is flexible and reusable, and that you avoid hard-coded dependencies and tight coupling between classes.

In this blog post, I will show you some of the most important and widely used creational design patterns in Kotlin Android. You will learn how to apply these patterns to your projects and how they can help you write better and more maintainable code. I will cover four creational design patterns:

Factory and abstract factory (provider model) method
Singleton
Builder
Dependency injection

Factory and abstract factory (provider model) method

The factory method pattern defines an interface for creating an object, but lets subclasses decide which class to instantiate. The abstract factory pattern provides an interface for creating families of related or dependent objects without specifying their concrete classes.

These patterns are useful when you want to decouple the creation of objects from their usage, or when you want to provide different implementations of the same interface depending on some conditions. For example, you can use these patterns to create different types of views or fragments based on the device configuration or user preferences.

In Kotlin, you can use the provider model to implement these patterns. The provider model is a way of creating objects using lambda expressions or function references that act as factories. For example, you can use a provider function to create different types of fragments based on a parameter:

// An interface for fragments that display some content interface ContentFragment { fun showContent(content: String) } // A concrete implementation of ContentFragment that shows content in a text view class TextFragment : Fragment(), ContentFragment { private lateinit var textView: TextView override fun onCreateView( inflater: LayoutInflater, container: ViewGroup?, savedInstanceState: Bundle? ): View? { return inflater.inflate(R.layout.text_fragment, container, false) } override fun onViewCreated(view: View, savedInstanceState: Bundle?) { super.onViewCreated(view, savedInstanceState) textView = view.findViewById(R.id.text_view) } override fun showContent(content: String) { textView.text = content } } // Another concrete implementation of ContentFragment that shows content in a web view class WebFragment : Fragment(), ContentFragment { private lateinit var webView: WebView override fun onCreateView( inflater: LayoutInflater, container: ViewGroup?, savedInstanceState: Bundle? ): View? { return inflater.inflate(R.layout.web_fragment, container, false) } override fun onViewCreated(view: View, savedInstanceState: Bundle?) { super.onViewCreated(view, savedInstanceState) webView = view.findViewById(R.id.web_view) } override fun showContent(content: String) { webView.loadUrl(content) } } // A provider function that returns a ContentFragment based on a parameter fun provideContentFragment(type: String): ContentFragment = when (type) { "text" -> TextFragment() "web" -> WebFragment() else -> throw IllegalArgumentException("Unknown type: $type") }

Singleton

The singleton pattern ensures that a class has only one instance and provides a global point of access to it. This pattern is useful when you want to have a single source of truth for some data or functionality in your app. For example, you can use this pattern to create a repository that handles data access from different sources.

In Kotlin, you can use the object declaration to create a singleton class. The object declaration combines a class declaration and a single instance of that class into one expression. For example, you can use an object declaration to create a news repository that fetches data from a remote data source:

// A singleton class that acts as a repository for news data object NewsRepository { // A reference to the remote data source private val newsRemoteDataSource = // getDataSource() // A flow that emits the latest news from the remote data source val latestNews: Flow<List<ArticleHeadline>> = newsRemoteDataSource.latestNews // A function that returns the details of an article by its id suspend fun getArticleDetails(id: String): ArticleDetails { return newsRemoteDataSource.getArticleDetails(id) } }

Builder

The builder pattern separates the construction of a complex object from its representation so that the same construction process can create different representations. This pattern is useful when you want to create objects with many optional parameters or when you want to have more control over how the object is constructed. For example, you can use this pattern to create an alert dialog with various options.

In Kotlin, you can use named arguments and default values to implement this pattern. Named arguments allow you to specify the name of a parameter when calling a function, which makes the code more readable and avoids errors when there are many parameters. Default values allow you to omit some parameters when calling a function if they have a predefined value. For example, you can use named arguments and default values to create an alert dialog builder class:

// A class that represents an alert dialog with various options class AlertDialog( val title: String, val message: String, val positiveButton: String = "OK", val negativeButton: String? = null, val icon: Int? = null, val onPositiveClick: () -> Unit = {}, val onNegativeClick: () -> Unit = {} ) { // A function that shows the alert dialog on the screen fun show() { // Create and display an alert dialog using the Android SDK ... } } // A builder class that creates an AlertDialog instance using named arguments and default values class AlertDialogBuilder { // A function that returns an AlertDialog instance with the given parameters fun build( title: String, message: String, positiveButton: String = "OK", negativeButton: String? = null, icon: Int? = null, onPositiveClick: () -> Unit = {}, onNegativeClick: () -> Unit = {} ): AlertDialog { return AlertDialog( title = title, message = message, positiveButton = positiveButton, negativeButton = negativeButton, icon = icon, onPositiveClick = onPositiveClick, onNegativeClick = onNegativeClick ) } }

Dependency injection

The dependency injection pattern is a technique whereby one object supplies the dependencies of another object. A dependency is an object that can be used (a service). An injection is the passing of a dependency to a dependent object (a client) that would use it.

This pattern is useful when you want to reduce coupling and increase testability between classes by delegating the responsibility of creating and providing dependencies to another object or framework. For example, you can use this pattern to inject dependencies into your activities or view models.

In Kotlin Android, you can use frameworks like Dagger or Koin to implement this pattern. These frameworks provide annotations or DSLs to define dependencies and inject them into your classes. For example, you can use Koin to inject dependencies into your view model:

// A class that represents a user profile view model with some dependencies class UserProfileViewModel( private val userRepository: UserRepository, private val analyticsService: AnalyticsService ) : ViewModel() { // Some view model logic using userRepository and analyticsService ... } // A module that defines dependencies using Koin DSL val appModule = module { // Define UserRepository as a singleton using factory function single<UserRepository> { UserRepositoryImpl(get()) } // Define AnalyticsService as a singleton using constructor injection single<AnalyticsService> { AnalyticsServiceImpl() } // Define UserProfileViewModel using constructor injection viewModel { UserProfileViewModel(get(), get()) } } // Start Koin with appModule in Application class class MyApp : Application() { override fun onCreate() { super.onCreate() startKoin { androidContext(this@MyApp) modules(appModule) } } } // Get UserProfileViewModel instance using Koin extension function in Activity class class UserProfileActivity : AppCompatActivity() { // Inject UserProfileViewModel private val viewModel by viewModel<UserProfileViewModel>() override fun onCreate(savedInstanceState: Bundle?) { super.onCreate(savedInstanceState) setContentView(R.layout.activity_user_profile) // Use viewModel ... } }

Conclusion

In this blog post, you learned how to use creational design patterns in Kotlin Android. You learned how to apply these patterns to your projects and how they can help you write better and more maintainable code. You learned how to use factory and abstract factory (provider model) method, singleton, builder, and dependency injection patterns.

If you want to learn more about design patterns and other Kotlin features for Android development, check out these resources:

I hope you enjoyed this blog post and found it useful. Happy coding! 😊

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How to use Flow in Android Programming

Flow is a stream processing API in Kotlin developed by JetBrains ¹. It’s an implementation of the Reactive Stream specification, an initiative whose goal is to provide a standard for asynchronous stream processing ¹. Jetbrains built Kotlin Flow on top of Kotlin Coroutines, which means that you can use suspend functions to produce and consume values asynchronously ².

In this blog post, I will show you how to use Flow in your Android project to handle live data updates and endless streams of data. You will learn how to create flows, modify them, collect them, and use StateFlow and SharedFlow to share state and events across your app.

Creating a flow

To create flows, use the flow builder APIs. The flow builder function creates a new flow where you can manually emit new values into the stream of data using the emit function ². For example, you can use a flow to receive live updates from a network API:

class NewsRemoteDataSource( private val newsApi: NewsApi, private val refreshIntervalMs: Long = 5000 ) { val latestNews: Flow<List<ArticleHeadline>> = flow { while(true) { val latestNews = newsApi.fetchLatestNews() emit(latestNews) // Emits the result of the request to the flow delay(refreshIntervalMs) // Suspends the coroutine for some time } } } // Interface that provides a way to make network requests with suspend functions interface NewsApi { suspend fun fetchLatestNews(): List<ArticleHeadline> }

The flow builder is executed within a coroutine. Thus, it benefits from the same asynchronous APIs, but some restrictions apply:

Flows are sequential. As the producer is in a coroutine, when calling a suspend function, the producer suspends until the suspend function returns ².
Flows are cold. This means that the flow builder is called every time a terminal operator is applied to the flow ². Terminal operators are functions that start collecting values from the flow, such as collect or first.

Modifying the stream

You can use various operators to transform or filter the values emitted by a flow. For example, you can use map to apply a function to each value, filter to remove unwanted values, or combine to merge two flows into one ². For example, you can use map to convert the list of article headlines into a list of article titles:

val latestNewsTitles: Flow<List<String>> = latestNews.map { headlines -> headlines.map { headline -> headline.title } }

You can also use operators that are specific to flows, such as debounce or distinctUntilChanged. These operators help you deal with flows that emit values too frequently or unnecessarily ². For example, you can use debounce to ignore values that are emitted in quick succession:

val debouncedNewsTitles: Flow<List<String>> = latestNewsTitles.debounce(1000) // Ignores values that are emitted less than 1000 ms apart

Collecting from a flow

To start receiving values from a flow, you need to collect it. Collecting is a terminal operation that triggers the execution of the flow and invokes a given action for every value emitted by the flow ². You need to collect flows from a coroutine or a suspend function. For example, you can collect the debounced news titles from an activity:

class LatestNewsActivity : AppCompatActivity() { private val newsRemoteDataSource = // getDataSource() override fun onCreate(savedInstanceState: Bundle?) { ... // Start a coroutine in the lifecycle scope lifecycleScope.launch { // repeatOnLifecycle launches the block in a new coroutine every time the // lifecycle is in the STARTED state (or above) and cancels it when it's STOPPED. repeatOnLifecycle(Lifecycle.State.STARTED) { // Trigger the flow and start listening for values. newsRemoteDataSource.debouncedNewsTitles.collect { titles -> // Update UI with new titles } } } } }

Note that collecting from a flow can be a suspending operation if the flow is infinite or slow. This means that you should not collect from multiple flows sequentially in the same coroutine, as this will block the execution of the next collect until the previous one finishes. Instead, you should launch multiple coroutines or use other operators like zip or flatMapMerge to collect from multiple flows concurrently ².

StateFlow and SharedFlow

StateFlow and SharedFlow are Flow APIs that enable flows to optimally emit state updates and emit values to multiple consumers ³.

StateFlow is a state-holder observable flow that emits the current and new state updates to its collectors. The current state value can also be read through its value property. To update state and send it to the flow, assign a new value to the value property of the MutableStateFlow class ³.

In Android, StateFlow is a great fit for classes that need to maintain an observable mutable state. For example, you can use StateFlow to expose UI state from a ViewModel:

class LatestNewsViewModel( private val newsRepository: NewsRepository ) : ViewModel() { // Backing property to avoid state updates from other classes private val _uiState = MutableStateFlow(LatestNewsUiState.Success(emptyList())) // The UI collects from this StateFlow to get its state updates val uiState: StateFlow<LatestNewsUiState> = _uiState init { viewModelScope.launch { newsRepository.favoriteLatestNews // Update View with the latest favorite news // Writes to the value property of MutableStateFlow, // adding a new element to the flow and updating all // of its collectors .collect { favoriteNews -> _uiState.value = LatestNewsUiState.Success(favoriteNews) } } } } // Represents different states for the LatestNews screen sealed class LatestNewsUiState { data class Success(val news: List<ArticleHeadline>): LatestNewsUiState() data class Error(val exception: Throwable): LatestNewsUiState() }

Unlike a cold flow built using the flow builder, a StateFlow is hot: collecting from the flow doesn’t trigger any producer code. A StateFlow is always active and in memory, and it becomes eligible for garbage collection only when there are no other references to it from a garbage collection root. When a new consumer starts collecting from the flow, it receives the last state in the stream and any subsequent states. You can find this behavior in other observable classes like LiveData ³.

SharedFlow is an observable hot flow that emits values only when active collectors are present. Unlike StateFlow, SharedFlow does not have any initial value nor does it store any value at all. To emit values into SharedFlow use its emit function ³.

In Android, SharedFlow is useful for sharing events among multiple consumers without having any initial value or state associated with them. For example, you can use SharedFlow to broadcast user input events across your app:

class UserInputManager { // Creates an instance of MutableSharedFlow with zero replay buffer size, // meaning that only new events will be emitted by this SharedFlow. private val _userInputEvents = MutableSharedFlow<UserInputEvent>() // Exposes only SharedFlow interface so other classes cannot modify it. val userInputEvents: SharedFlow<UserInputEvent> = _userInputEvents fun onUserInput(event: UserInputEvent) { viewModelScope.launch { _userInputEvents.emit(event) // Emits event into SharedFlow } } } // Represents different types of user input events sealed class UserInputEvent { data class Tap(val x: Float, val y: Float): UserInputEvent() data class Swipe(val direction: Direction): UserInputEvent() }

To collect from StateFlow or SharedFlow, you can use any terminal operator like collect or first as with any other flow.

Conclusion

In this blog post, you learned how to use Flow in your Android project to handle live data updates and endless streams of data. You learned how to create flows, modify them, collect them, and use StateFlow and SharedFlow to share state and events across your app.

If you want to learn more about Flow and other Kotlin features for Android development, check out these resources:

I hope you enjoyed this blog post and found it useful. Happy coding! 😊