How can Android Jetpack components improve your Kotlin project?

1 Architecture components

One of the main advantages of Android Jetpack components is that they provide a set of architecture components that help you design robust, testable, and maintainable apps. Architecture components include LiveData, ViewModel, Room, Navigation, WorkManager, and more. These components help you manage UI data, lifecycle, persistence, navigation, background work, and other common app challenges. For example, you can use LiveData to observe data changes and update the UI accordingly, or use Room to abstract SQLite database operations and provide compile-time verification of queries.

2 UI components

Another benefit of Android Jetpack components is that they offer a variety of UI components that help you create beautiful, responsive, and adaptive user interfaces. UI components include Material Components, ConstraintLayout, RecyclerView, ViewPager2, and more. These components help you implement Material Design principles, optimize layout performance, handle user input, and support different screen sizes and orientations. For example, you can use Material Components to apply consistent styles, themes, and animations to your app, or use ConstraintLayout to create flexible and scalable layouts with flat view hierarchies.

3 Behavior components

A third advantage of Android Jetpack components is that they enable a range of behavior components that help you integrate standard Android services and features into your app. Behavior components include CameraX, Notifications, Permissions, Media, and more. These components help you access device hardware, communicate with users, request user consent, play and manage media, and other common app functions. For example, you can use CameraX to simplify camera operations and support different devices, or use Notifications to create and display notifications with rich content and actions.

4 Foundation components

A fourth benefit of Android Jetpack components is that they support a set of foundation components that help you optimize app performance, stability, and compatibility. Foundation components include AppCompat, Kotlin Extensions, Android KTX, Testing, and more. These components help you provide backward compatibility, use Kotlin features and idioms, write concise and expressive code, and test your app functionality and quality. For example, you can use AppCompat to ensure that your app works on older versions of Android, or use Kotlin Extensions to access synthetic properties and delegates for views and fragments.

5 How to use Android Jetpack components in your Kotlin project

Now that you know some of the benefits and features of Android Jetpack components, you might wonder how to use them in your Kotlin project. The good news is that Android Jetpack components are designed to work well with Kotlin, and you can easily add them to your project using Gradle dependencies. For example, to use LiveData and ViewModel in your project, you can add the following lines to your app-level build.gradle file:

dependencies {
    // LiveData
    implementation "androidx.lifecycle:lifecycle-livedata-ktx:2.3.1"
    // ViewModel
    implementation "androidx.lifecycle:lifecycle-viewmodel-ktx:2.3.1"
}        

You can also use Android Studio templates and wizards to create and configure Android Jetpack components in your project. For example, to create a new activity with a ViewModel and a LiveData object, you can choose File > New > Activity > Empty Activity with ViewModel.

6 Best practices and resources for Android Jetpack components

To get the most out of Android Jetpack components, you should follow some best practices and guidelines that help you use them effectively and consistently. These best practices include using a single-activity architecture with fragments and navigation component, data binding and view binding to bind UI components to data sources, coroutines and flow to handle asynchronous operations and streams of data, dependency injection and service locator to decouple your app components, and the Android Jetpack guide to app architecture to combine different Android Jetpack components into a coherent structure. Additionally, there are many resources and tutorials that can help you learn and use Android Jetpack components in your Kotlin project. These include the official Android Jetpack documentation, the official Android Developers YouTube channel, the official Android Kotlin Fundamentals course, and the official Android Jetpack codelabs.

7 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?