Android Scopes

Taming the Android lifecycle

Android components are mainly managed by their lifecycle: we can't directly instantiate an Activity nor a Fragment. The system make all creation and management for us, and make callbacks on methods: onCreate, onStart...

That's why we can't describe our Activity/Fragment/Service in a Koin module. We need then to inject dependencies into properties and also respect the lifecycle: Components related to the UI parts must be released on soon as we don't need them anymore.

Then we have:

  • long live components (Services, Data Repository ...) - used by several screens, never dropped
  • medium live components (user sessions ...) - used by several screens, must be dropped after an amount of time
  • short live components (views) - used by only one screen & must be dropped at the end of the screen

Long live components can be easily described as single definitions. For medium and short live components we can have several approaches.

In the case of MVP architecture style, the Presenter is a short live component to help/support the UI. The presenter must be created each time the screen is showing, and dropped once the screen is gone.

A new Presenter is created each time

class DetailActivity : AppCompatActivity() {
// injected Presenter
override val presenter : Presenter by inject()

We can describe it in a module:

  • as factory - to produce a new instance each time the by inject() or get() is called
val androidModule = module {
// Factory instance of Presenter
factory { Presenter() }
}
  • as scope - to produce an instance tied to a scope
val androidModule = module {
scope<DetailActivity> {
scoped { Presenter() }
}
}
note

Most of Android memory leaks comes from referencing a UI/Android component from a non Android component. The system keeps a reference on it and can't totally drop it via garbage collection.

Scope for Android Components

Declare a scope

To use a scoped Android component, you have to declare a scope for your component with the scope block like follow:

class MyPresenter()
class MyAdapter(val presenter : MyPresenter)
module {
// Declare scope for MyActivity
scope<MyActivity> {
// get MyPresenter instance from current scope
scoped { MyAdapter(get()) }
scoped { MyPresenter() }
}
}

Setup the scope

To use a scope declared in a module, we need to use the AndroidScopeComponent interface and implement the scope property. This scope property can be used with the following property delegates, regarding your component:

  • activityScope() - Follow Activity lifecycle
  • activityRetainedScope() - Follow Activity's ViewModel lifecycle
  • fragmentScope() - Follow Fragment lifecycle, and is linked to parent's scope
  • serviceScope() - Follow Service lifecycle
class MyActivity : AppCompatActivity, AndroidScopeComponent {
// get current Activity's scope
override val scope : Scope by activityScope()
// MyPresenter is resolved from MyActivity's scope
val presenter : MyPresenter by inject()
}

We can also setup a scope, tied to a ViewModel with teh following:

class MyActivity : AppCompatActivity, AndroidScopeComponent {
// use Activity Retained Scope
override val scope : Scope by activityRetainedScope()
val presenter : MyPresenter by inject()
}

Sharing instances between components with custom scopes & Scope Links

In a more extended usage, you can use a Scope instance across components. For example, if we need to share a UserSession instance.

First declare a scope definition:

module {
// Shared user session data
scope(named("session")) {
scoped { UserSession() }
}
}

When needed to begin use a UserSession instance, create a scope for it:

val ourSession = getKoin().createScope("ourSession",named("session"))
// link ourSession scope to current `scope`, from ScopeActivity or ScopeFragment
scope.linkTo(ourSession)

Then use it anywhere you need it:

class MyActivity1 : ScopeActivity() {
fun reuseSession(){
val ourSession = getKoin().createScope("ourSession",named("session"))
// link ourSession scope to current `scope`, from ScopeActivity or ScopeFragment
scope.linkTo(ourSession)
// will look at MyActivity1's Scope + ourSession scope to resolve
val userSession = get<UserSession>()
}
}
class MyActivity2 : ScopeActivity() {
fun reuseSession(){
val ourSession = getKoin().createScope("ourSession",named("session"))
// link ourSession scope to current `scope`, from ScopeActivity or ScopeFragment
scope.linkTo(ourSession)
// will look at MyActivity2's Scope + ourSession scope to resolve
val userSession = get<UserSession>()
}
}
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