Yet another adapter delegate library.

Yet another adapter delegate library.

repositories {
    ...
    maven { url 'https://jitpack.io' }
}

...

dependencies {
    implementation("com.github.Miha-x64:Delegapter:-SNAPSHOT")
}

ViewHolder

We use our own ViewHolder class (called just VH) for a bunch of reasons:

• RecyclerView.ViewHolder is abstract, but it's sometimes necessary to create a “dumb” holder without any special fields or behaviour, thus VH is open
• There's RecyclerView.ViewHolder.itemView: View, but VH is generic, and has a property VH<V, …>.view: V
• When using viewBinding, all ViewHolders look the same: they have binding field. VH supports an attachment of any type which is typically ViewBinding: VH<*, B, …>.binding: B
• Delegapter needs to tie certain ViewHolder type with the corresponding data type for type safety: VH<V : View, B, D>
• Therefore, VH<*, *, D> has its own bind(D) method which is a common practice (but not forced by the library)

There's a lot of factory functions for creating ViewHolders:

VH(TextView(parent.context).apply {
    layoutParams = RecyclerView.LayoutParams(MATCH_PARENT, WRAP_CONTENT)
    fontRes = R.font.roboto
    textSize = 17f
}, TextView::setText) // VH<TextView, Nothing?, CharSequence>

inflateVH(parent, ItemUserBinding::inflate) { user: User ->
    imageLoader.load(user.photo).into(photoView)
    nameView.text = user.name
} // VH<View, ItemUserBinding, User>

// and more…

Delegate

Delegate is just a ViewHolder factory:

typealias Delegate<D> = (parent: ViewGroup) -> VH<*, *, D>

VH::V and VH::B are actually implementation details of a certain VH, Delegapter does not need them after instantiation, thus <*, *.

A typical Delegate declaration looks like this:

val userDelegate = ::userHolder
private fun userHolder(parent: ViewGroup): Delegate<User> =
    inflateVH(…) { … }

In this example, userDelegate property guarantees object identity (::userHolder expression could give out different instances between invocations). You can just write val userDelegate = { parent -> … }, of course, but method reference, unlike lambda, gives meaningful toString() and helps debugging.

Delegapter

Delegapter is basically a list of (item, delegate) tuples, but their type agreement is guaranteed, like it was a List<<D> Pair<D, Delegate<D>> (non-denotable type in Java/Kotlin).

Delegapter is not an Adapter itself, just a special data structure. Let's use base VHAdapter for convenience:

class SomeAdapter : VHAdapter<VH<*, *, *>>() {

    init { stateRestorationPolicy = … }

    private val d = Delegapter(this /* pass self to get notified */)

    override fun getItemCount(): Int =
        d.size

    override fun getItemViewType(position: Int): Int =
        d.viewTypeAt(position)

    override fun onCreateViewHolder(parent: ViewGroup, viewType: Int): VH<*, *, *> =
        d.createViewHolder(parent, viewType)

    override fun onBindViewHolder(holder: VH<*, *, *>, position: Int, payloads: List<Any>): Unit =
        d.bindViewHolder(holder, position, payloads)

    fun update(data: Data) {
        d.clear()
        d.add(data.header, headerDelegate)
        d.addAll(data.recommended, recommendationDelegate)
        d.addAll(data.posts, postDelegate)
        // use autocomplete to see all available functions
    }

}

This gives you some flexibility for advanced usage scenarios:

• Insert items not handled by Delegapter (headers, footers, ads 🤮 ). (Instead of passing this to the constructor, use custom ListUpdateCallback implementation to correct notify*() calls.)
• Filter out some items without removing them. (This requires a corrected ListUpdateCallback, too.)
• Use several Delegapters in a single Adapter (IDK why but this should happen at some point).

In order to share RecycledViewPool between several RecyclerViews, you need to preserve the same viewType to Delegate mapping across adapters. This can be achieved using “parent” Delegapter:

val delegapterFather = Delegapter(NullListUpdateCallback)

…

class SomeAdapter : RecyclerView.Adapter<…>() {
    private val d = Delegapter(this, delegapterFather)
    …
}

Apart from skeletal VHAdapter, there are two more: RepeatAdapter and SingleTypeAdapter. They don't use Delegapter but employ VH and Delegate for the ease of use.

ItemDecoration

Decorating different viewTypes is a stressful job. Here's how Delegapter helps you to add spaces between items of certain types:

data.decor(RecyclerView.VERTICAL) {
  // keep 16dp after title, before user
  between({ it === headerDelegate }, { it === userDelegate }, spaceSize = 16f)

  // keep 30dp between any two users
  between({ it === userDelegate }, spaceSize = 30f)
  
  // text units for text items!
  between({ it === textDelegate }, spaceSize = 16f, spaceUnit = COMPLEX_UNIT_SP)
}

Predicates like { it === headerDelegate } look clumsy but are very flexible because you can check for several conditions there, for example, match any type ({ true }) or check for external conditions ({ useTextSpaces && it === textDelegate }).

Any tool can make you happy until it works fine. And make you hate your job when something gets screwed up. A virtue of any abstraction level is an ability to peek into and see what actually happens. If you feel sad, just pass some booleans around: decor(orientation, debugDelegates = true, debugSpaces = true). This will show you which delegate is used for each item (that's where ::function.toString() helps!), or highlight spaces, accordingly.