views-dsl-appcompat

Views DSL AppCompat

AppCompat extension of Views DSL

Supported platforms: Android.

Setup

If you want to use this dependency without using one of the fun packs, you can use Splitties.viewsDslAppcompat, provided you have refreshVersions added to the project.

For reference, the maven coordinates of this module are com.louiscad.splitties:splitties-views-dsl-appcompat.

How AppCompat works with xml

When using an AppCompat theme, the LayoutInflater replaces the platform widgets like TextView and Button found in your xml layouts by a compatibility version (i.e. AppCompatButton, AppCompatTextView, etc.).

If you're curious to see how it works, look for the method createView in the AppCompatViewInflater class from the androidx.appcompat.app package.

How AppCompat works with Splitties Views DSL

Since the LayoutInflater only works on xml, if you use view(::TextView) with Views DSL, you get a TextView instance, not an AppCompatTextView instance. This means it will not have AppCompat features and styling (e.g. auto size for TextView).

However, if you use textView() it will automatically delegate to this split if in the dependencies, returning an AppCompatTextView instance.

This works for all AppCompat widgets.

If you want to use a style defined in appcompat (like Widget_AppCompat_Button_Colored), just cache locally an AppCompatStyles instance and use its properties and functions.

Supported widgets

All AppCompat widgets are supported.

Here's the full list:

• TextView
• ImageView
• Button
• EditText
• Spinner
• ImageButton
• CheckBox
• RadioButton
• CheckedTextView
• AutoCompleteTextView
• MultiAutoCompleteTextView
• RatingBar
• SeekBar

Just call the related method that is the camelCase version of the PascalCase constructor. For example, you can call seekBar(…) { … } and you'll receive an AppCompatSeekBar instance.

Note that automatically doesn't mean magically. In fact, no reflection is involved (contrary to xml inflation).

You can also see the source of the function that maps to AppCompat widgets versions, and the Initializer that makes it zero initialization on your side.

There's also support for Toolbar with the toolbar function, and SwitchCompat with the switch function.

Note that the returned Toolbar handles config changes.

Multi-process apps

If your app needs to use AppCompat themed widgets in the non default process, you'll need to manually setup ViewFactory, so it uses AppCompat.

Here's how you need to do it:

1. Copy and paste this Initializer into a package of an android library/app module of your project
2. Create an internal subclass of androidx.startup.InitializationProvider
3. Declare that subclass in the AndroidManifest.xml of the module exactly like it is done here. To do so, copy and paste it, then fix the package of the class under the android:name xml attribute of the provider tag, specify the android:process value to the one of your non default process, and finally changed the android:name xml attribute of the meta-data tag to the initializer you copied in the first step.

Be sure to test it to make sure you have set it up properly.