What’s New in Android Architecture Components in a Nutshell

This year google added some of the features in android architecture components. I am sharing the highlights here.

Data Binding:

1. Faster annotation processing
2. Live class generation means no need to compile after updating xml
3. Better error messages rather showing thousand of meaningless errors
4. View Binding for accessing views (From AS 3.6) which is 100% compile safety and faster build time

Lifecycle:

1. SavedState after process kill/death using SavedStateHandle
2. SavedState for UI bits like selections, scroll state and navigation state even for LiveData
3. ViewModel initialisation by property delegation
4. Use direct livedata instead of using Transformations for mapping

Workmanager:

1. On demand initialisation means need context for lazy initialisation
2. Integration with play services for pre-M support
3. Unit testing and robolectric support
4. Foreground service support

Room:

1. Added coroutines suspend methods for Room DAO interface
2. Full text search
3. RX return support in Room DAO interface

Paging:

1. Network support with error handling
2. Better RXJava and Coroutines support

Waiting for these awesome updates with stable release.