UI events

UI events are actions that should be handled in the UI layer, either by the UI or by the ViewModel. The most common type of events are user events. The user produces user events by interacting with the app—for example, by tapping the screen or by generating gestures. The UI then consumes these events using callbacks such as onClick() listeners.

The ViewModel is normally responsible for handling the business logic of a particular user event—for example, the user clicking on a button to refresh some data. Usually, the ViewModel handles this by exposing functions that the UI can call. User events might also have UI behavior logic that the UI can handle directly—for example, navigating to a different screen or showing a Snackbar.

While the business logic remains the same for the same app on different mobile platforms or form factors, the UI behavior logic is an implementation detail that might differ between those cases. The UI layer page defines these types of logic as follows:

• Business logic refers to what to do with state changes—for example, making a payment or storing user preferences. The domain and data layers usually handle this logic. Throughout this guide, the Architecture Components ViewModel class is used as an opinionated solution for classes that handle business logic.
• UI behavior logic or UI logic refers to how to display state changes—for example, navigation logic or how to show messages to the user. The UI handles this logic.

UI event decision tree

The following diagram shows a decision tree to find the best approach for handling a particular event use case. The rest of this guide explains these approaches in detail.

Handle user events

The UI can handle user events directly if those events relate to modifying the state of a UI element—for example, the state of an expandable item. If the event requires performing business logic, such as refreshing the data on the screen, it should be processed by the ViewModel.

The following example shows how different buttons are used to expand a UI element (UI logic) and to refresh the data on the screen (business logic):

class LatestNewsActivity : AppCompatActivity() {

    private lateinit var binding: ActivityLatestNewsBinding
    private val viewModel: LatestNewsViewModel by viewModels()

    override fun onCreate(savedInstanceState: Bundle?) {
        /* ... */

        // The expand details event is processed by the UI that
        // modifies a View's internal state.
        binding.expandButton.setOnClickListener {
            binding.expandedSection.visibility = View.VISIBLE
        }

        // The refresh event is processed by the ViewModel that is in charge
        // of the business logic.
        binding.refreshButton.setOnClickListener {
            viewModel.refreshNews()
        }
    }
}

@Composable
fun LatestNewsScreen(viewModel: LatestNewsViewModel = viewModel()) {

    // State of whether more details should be shown
    var expanded by remember { mutableStateOf(false) }

    Column {
        Text("Some text")
        if (expanded) {
            Text("More details")
        }

        Button(
          // The expand details event is processed by the UI that
          // modifies this composable's internal state.
          onClick = { expanded = !expanded }
        ) {
          val expandText = if (expanded) "Collapse" else "Expand"
          Text("$expandText details")
        }

        // The refresh event is processed by the ViewModel that is in charge
        // of the UI's business logic.
        Button(onClick = { viewModel.refreshNews() }) {
            Text("Refresh data")
        }
    }
}

User events in RecyclerViews

If the action is produced further down the UI tree, like in a RecyclerView item or a custom View, the ViewModel should still be the one handling user events.

For example, suppose that all news items from NewsActivity contain a bookmark button. The ViewModel needs to know the ID of the bookmarked news item. When the user bookmarks a news item, the RecyclerView adapter does not call the exposed addBookmark(newsId) function from the ViewModel, which would require a dependency on the ViewModel. Instead, the ViewModel exposes a state object called NewsItemUiState which contains the implementation for handling the event:

data class NewsItemUiState(
    val title: String,
    val body: String,
    val bookmarked: Boolean = false,
    val publicationDate: String,
    val onBookmark: () -> Unit
)

class LatestNewsViewModel(
    private val formatDateUseCase: FormatDateUseCase,
    private val repository: NewsRepository
)
    val newsListUiItems = repository.latestNews.map { news ->
        NewsItemUiState(
            title = news.title,
            body = news.body,
            bookmarked = news.bookmarked,
            publicationDate = formatDateUseCase(news.publicationDate),
            // Business logic is passed as a lambda function that the
            // UI calls on click events.
            onBookmark = {
                repository.addBookmark(news.id)
            }
        )
    }
}

This way, the RecyclerView adapter only works with the data that it needs: the list of NewsItemUiState objects. The adapter doesn’t have access to the entire ViewModel, making it less likely to abuse the functionality exposed by the ViewModel. When you allow only the activity class to work with the ViewModel, you separate responsibilities. This ensures that UI-specific objects like views or RecyclerView adapters don't interact directly with the ViewModel.

Naming conventions for user event functions

In this guide, the ViewModel functions that handle user events are named with a verb based on the action that they handle—for example: addBookmark(id) or logIn(username, password).

Handle ViewModel events

UI actions that originate from the ViewModel—ViewModel events—should always result in a UI state update. This complies with the principles of Unidirectional Data Flow. It makes events reproducible after configuration changes and guarantees that UI actions won't be lost. Optionally, you can also make events reproducible after process death if you use the saved state module.

Mapping UI actions to UI state is not always a simple process, but it does lead to simpler logic. Your thought process shouldn't end with determining how to make the UI navigate to a particular screen, for example. You need to think further and consider how to represent that user flow in your UI state. In other words: don't think about what actions the UI needs to make; think about how those actions affect the UI state.

For example, consider the case of navigating to the home screen when the user is logged in on the login screen. You could model this in the UI state as follows:

data class LoginUiState(
    val isLoading: Boolean = false,
    val errorMessage: String? = null,
    val isUserLoggedIn: Boolean = false
)

This UI reacts to changes to the isUserLoggedIn state and navigates to the correct destination as needed:

class LoginViewModel : ViewModel() {
    private val _uiState = MutableStateFlow(LoginUiState())
    val uiState: StateFlow<LoginUiState> = _uiState.asStateFlow()
    /* ... */
}

class LoginActivity : AppCompatActivity() {
    private val viewModel: LoginViewModel by viewModels()

    override fun onCreate(savedInstanceState: Bundle?) {
        /* ... */

        lifecycleScope.launch {
            repeatOnLifecycle(Lifecycle.State.STARTED) {
                viewModel.uiState.collect { uiState ->
                    if (uiState.isUserLoggedIn) {
                        // Navigate to the Home screen.
                    }
                    ...
                }
            }
        }
    }
}

class LoginViewModel : ViewModel() {
    var uiState by mutableStateOf(LoginUiState())
        private set
    /* ... */
}

@Composable
fun LoginScreen(
    viewModel: LoginViewModel = viewModel(),
    onUserLogIn: () -> Unit
) {
    val currentOnUserLogIn by rememberUpdatedState(onUserLogIn)

    // Whenever the uiState changes, check if the user is logged in.
    LaunchedEffect(viewModel.uiState)  {
        if (viewModel.uiState.isUserLoggedIn) {
            currentOnUserLogIn()
        }
    }

    // Rest of the UI for the login screen.
}

Consuming events can trigger state updates

Consuming certain ViewModel events in the UI might result in other UI state updates. For example, when showing transient messages on the screen to let the user know that something happened, the UI needs to notify the ViewModel to trigger another state update when the message has been shown on the screen. The event that happens when the user has consumed the message (by dismissing it or after a timeout) can be treated as "user input" and as such, the ViewModel should be aware of that. In this situation, the UI state can be modeled as follows:

// Models the UI state for the Latest news screen.
data class LatestNewsUiState(
    val news: List<News> = emptyList(),
    val isLoading: Boolean = false,
    val userMessage: String? = null
)

The ViewModel would update the UI state as follows when the business logic requires showing a new transient message to the user:

class LatestNewsViewModel(/* ... */) : ViewModel() {

    private val _uiState = MutableStateFlow(LatestNewsUiState(isLoading = true))
    val uiState: StateFlow<LatestNewsUiState> = _uiState

    fun refreshNews() {
        viewModelScope.launch {
            // If there isn't internet connection, show a new message on the screen.
            if (!internetConnection()) {
                _uiState.update { currentUiState ->
                    currentUiState.copy(userMessage = "No Internet connection")
                }
                return@launch
            }

            // Do something else.
        }
    }

    fun userMessageShown() {
        _uiState.update { currentUiState ->
            currentUiState.copy(userMessage = null)
        }
    }
}

class LatestNewsViewModel(/* ... */) : ViewModel() {

    var uiState by mutableStateOf(LatestNewsUiState())
        private set

    fun refreshNews() {
        viewModelScope.launch {
            // If there isn't internet connection, show a new message on the screen.
            if (!internetConnection()) {
                uiState = uiState.copy(userMessage = "No Internet connection")
                return@launch
            }

            // Do something else.
        }
    }

    fun userMessageShown() {
        uiState = uiState.copy(userMessage = null)
    }
}

The ViewModel doesn't need to know how the UI is showing the message on the screen; it just knows that there's a user message that needs to be shown. Once the transient message has been shown, the UI needs to notify the ViewModel of that, causing another UI state update to clear the userMessage property:

class LatestNewsActivity : AppCompatActivity() {
    private val viewModel: LatestNewsViewModel by viewModels()

    override fun onCreate(savedInstanceState: Bundle?) {
        /* ... */

        lifecycleScope.launch {
            repeatOnLifecycle(Lifecycle.State.STARTED) {
                viewModel.uiState.collect { uiState ->
                    uiState.userMessage?.let {
                        // TODO: Show Snackbar with userMessage.

                        // Once the message is displayed and
                        // dismissed, notify the ViewModel.
                        viewModel.userMessageShown()
                    }
                    ...
                }
            }
        }
    }
}

@Composable
fun LatestNewsScreen(
    snackbarHostState: SnackbarHostState,
    viewModel: LatestNewsViewModel = viewModel(),
) {
    // Rest of the UI content.

    // If there are user messages to show on the screen, 
    // show it and notify the ViewModel.
    viewModel.uiState.userMessage?.let { userMessage ->
        LaunchedEffect(userMessage) {
            snackbarHostState.showSnackbar(userMessage)
            // Once the message is displayed and dismissed, notify the ViewModel.
            viewModel.userMessageShown()
        }
    }
}

Other use cases

If you think your UI event use case cannot be solved with UI state updates, you might need to reconsider how data flows in your app. Consider the following principles:

• Each class should do what they're responsible for, not more. The UI is in charge of screen-specific behavior logic such as navigation calls, click events, and obtaining permission requests. The ViewModel contains business logic and converts the results from lower layers of the hierarchy into UI state.
• Think about where the event originates. Follow the decision tree presented at the beginning of this guide, and make each class handle what they're responsible for. For example, if the event originates from the UI and it results in a navigation event, then that event has to be handled in the UI. Some logic might be delegated to the ViewModel, but handling the event can’t be entirely delegated to the ViewModel.
• If you have multiple consumers and you're worried about the event being consumed multiple times, you might need to reconsider your app architecture. Having multiple concurrent consumers results in the delivered exactly once contract becoming extremely difficult to guarantee, so the amount of complexity and subtle behavior explodes. If you're having this problem, consider pushing those concerns upwards in your UI tree; you might need a different entity scoped higher up in the hierarchy.
• Think about when the state needs to be consumed. In certain situations, you might not want to keep consuming state when the app is in the background—for example, showing a Toast. In those cases, consider consuming the state when the UI is in the foreground.