ViewModel overview (Views)

Concepts and Jetpack Compose implementation

The ViewModel class is a business logic or screen level state holder. It exposes state to the UI and encapsulates related business logic. Its principal advantage is that it caches state and persists it through configuration changes. This means that your UI doesn't have to fetch data again when navigating between activities, or following configuration changes, such as when rotating the screen.

ViewModel benefits

The alternative to a ViewModel is a plain class that holds the data you display in your UI. This can become a problem when navigating between activities or Navigation destinations. Doing so destroys that data if you don't store it using the saved instance state mechanism. ViewModel provides a convenient API for data persistence that resolves this issue.

The key benefits of the ViewModel class are essentially two:

  • It lets you persist UI state.
  • It provides access to business logic.

Scope

When you instantiate a ViewModel, you pass it an object that implements the ViewModelStoreOwner interface. This may be a Navigation destination, Navigation graph, activity, fragment, or any other type that implements the interface. Your ViewModel is then scoped to the Lifecycle of the ViewModelStoreOwner. It remains in memory until its ViewModelStoreOwner goes away permanently.

A range of classes are either direct or indirect subclasses of the ViewModelStoreOwner interface. The direct subclasses are ComponentActivity, Fragment, and NavBackStackEntry. For a full list of indirect subclasses, see the ViewModelStoreOwner reference.

Implement a ViewModel

The following is an example implementation of a ViewModel for a screen that allows the user to roll dice.

Kotlin

data class DiceUiState(
    val firstDieValue: Int? = null,
    val secondDieValue: Int? = null,
    val numberOfRolls: Int = 0,
)

class DiceRollViewModel : ViewModel() {

    // Expose screen UI state
    private val _uiState = MutableStateFlow(DiceUiState())
    val uiState: StateFlow<DiceUiState> = _uiState.asStateFlow()

    // Handle business logic
    fun rollDice() {
        _uiState.update { currentState ->
            currentState.copy(
                firstDieValue = Random.nextInt(from = 1, until = 7),
                secondDieValue = Random.nextInt(from = 1, until = 7),
                numberOfRolls = currentState.numberOfRolls + 1,
            )
        }
    }
}

Java

public class DiceUiState {
    private final Integer firstDieValue;
    private final Integer secondDieValue;
    private final int numberOfRolls;

    // ...
}

public class DiceRollViewModel extends ViewModel {

    private final MutableLiveData<DiceUiState> uiState =
        new MutableLiveData(new DiceUiState(null, null, 0));
    public LiveData<DiceUiState> getUiState() {
        return uiState;
    }

    public void rollDice() {
        Random random = new Random();
        uiState.setValue(
            new DiceUiState(
                random.nextInt(7) + 1,
                random.nextInt(7) + 1,
                uiState.getValue().getNumberOfRolls() + 1
            )
        );
    }
}

You can then access the ViewModel from an activity as follows:

Kotlin

import androidx.activity.viewModels

class DiceRollActivity : AppCompatActivity() {

    override fun onCreate(savedInstanceState: Bundle?) {
        // Create a ViewModel the first time the system calls an activity's onCreate() method.
        // Re-created activities receive the same DiceRollViewModel instance created by the first activity.

        // Use the 'by viewModels()' Kotlin property delegate
        // from the activity-ktx artifact
        val viewModel: DiceRollViewModel by viewModels()
        lifecycleScope.launch {
            repeatOnLifecycle(Lifecycle.State.STARTED) {
                viewModel.uiState.collect {
                    // Update UI elements
                }
            }
        }
    }
}

Java

public class MyActivity extends AppCompatActivity {
    public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);

        // Create a ViewModel the first time the system calls an activity's onCreate() method.
        // Re-created activities receive the same MyViewModel instance created by the first activity.
        DiceRollViewModel model = new ViewModelProvider(this).get(DiceRollViewModel.class);
        model.getUiState().observe(this, uiState -> {
            // update UI
        });
    }
}