Modifying simple values and data classes using EditText is fairly straight forward, and generally looks like this:
data class Person(var firstName: String, var lastName: Int)
// ...
val (person, setPerson) = remember { mutableStateOf(Person()) }
// common `onChange` function handles both class properties, ensuring maximum code re-use
fun <T> onChange(field: KMutableProperty1<Person, T>, value: T) {
val nextPerson = person.copy()
field.set(nextPerson, value)
setPerson(nextPerson)
}
// text field for first name
TextField(
value = person.firstName,
onChange = { it -> onChange(Person::firstName, it) })
// text field for last name name
TextField(
value = person.lastName,
onChange = { it -> onChange(Person::lastName, it) })
As you can see, the code in this example is highly reusable: thanks to Kotlin's reflection features, we can use a single onChange function to modify every property in this class.
However, a problem arises when the Person class is not instantiated from scratch, but rather pulled from disk via Room. For example, a PersonDao might contain a `findOne() function like so:
@Query("SELECT * FROM peopleTable WHERE id=:personId LIMIT 1")
fun findOne(personId: String): LiveData<Person>
However, you cannot really use this LiveData in a remember {} for many reasons:
- While
LiveDatahas a function calledobserveAsState(), it returnsState<T>and notMutableState<T>, meaning that you cannot modify it with theTextFields. As such this does not work:remember { personFromDb.observeAsState()}
- You cannot
.copy()thePersonthat you get from your database because your component will render before the Room query is returned, meaning that you cannot do this, because thePersonclass instance will be remembered asnull:remember { mutableStateOf(findPersonQueryResult.value) }
Given that, what is the proper way to handle this? Should the component that contains the TextFields be wrapped in another component that handles the Room query, and only displays the form when the query is returned? What would that look like with this case of LiveData<Person>?