Why a viewmodel factory is needed in Android?

Question

We have been discussing about this but we don't know the reason of creating a viewmodel factory to create a viewmodel instead of instantiate the viewmodel directly. What is the gain of creating a factory that just creates the viewmodel?

I just put a simple example of how I did it without Factory

here is the kodein module:

val heroesRepositoryModel = Kodein {
    bind<HeroesRepository>() with singleton {
        HeroesRepository()
    }

    bind<ApiDataSource>() with singleton {
        DataModule.create()
    }

    bind<MainViewModel>() with provider {
        MainViewModel()
    }
}

The piece of the Activity where I instantiate the viewmodel without using the factory

class MainActivity : AppCompatActivity() {
    private lateinit var heroesAdapter: HeroAdapter
    private lateinit var viewModel: MainViewModel
    private val heroesList = mutableListOf<Heroes.MapHero>()
    private var page = 0
    private var progressBarUpdated = false

    override fun onCreate(savedInstanceState: Bundle?) {
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState)
        setContentView(R.layout.activity_main)
        viewModel = ViewModelProviders.of(this)
                .get(MainViewModel::class.java)
        initAdapter()
        initObserver()
        findHeroes()
    }

The ViewModel where I instantiate the usecase directly without having it in the constructor

class MainViewModel : ViewModel(), CoroutineScope {

    private val heroesRepository: HeroesRepository = heroesRepositoryModel.instance()
    val data = MutableLiveData<List<Heroes.MapHero>>()

    private var job: Job = Job()
    override val coroutineContext: CoroutineContext
        get() = uiContext + job

    fun getHeroesFromRepository(page: Int) {
        launch {
            try {
                val response = heroesRepository.getHeroes(page).await()
                data.value = response.data.results.map { it.convertToMapHero() }
            } catch (e: HttpException) {
                data.value = null
            } catch (e: Throwable) {
                data.value = null
            }
        }
    }

    override fun onCleared() {
        super.onCleared()
        job.cancel()
    }
}

So here a example using factory

class ListFragment : Fragment(), KodeinAware, ContactsAdapter.OnContactListener {

    override val kodein by closestKodein()

    private lateinit var adapterContacts: ContactsAdapter

    private val mainViewModelFactory: MainViewModelFactory by instance()
    private val mainViewModel: MainViewModel by lazy {
        activity?.run {
            ViewModelProviders.of(this, mainViewModelFactory)
                .get(MainViewModel::class.java)
        } ?: throw Exception("Invalid Activity")
    }

    override fun onCreateView(
            inflater: LayoutInflater, container: ViewGroup?, savedInstanceState: Bundle?): View? {
        return inflater.inflate(R.layout.fragment_list, container, false)
    }

The viewmodelfactory:

class MainViewModelFactory (private val getContacts: GetContacts) : ViewModelProvider.Factory {

    override fun <T : ViewModel?> create(modelClass: Class<T>): T {
        if (modelClass.isAssignableFrom(MainViewModel::class.java)) {
            return MainViewModel(getContacts) as T
        }
        throw IllegalArgumentException("Unknown ViewModel class")
    }
}

And the viewmodel:

class MainViewModel(private val getContacts: GetContacts) : BaseViewModel() {
    lateinit var gamesList: LiveData<PagedList<Contact>>
    var contactsSelectedData: MutableLiveData<List<Contact>> = MutableLiveData()
    var contactsSelected: ArrayList<Contact> = ArrayList()
    private val pagedListConfig by lazy {
        PagedList.Config.Builder()
                .setEnablePlaceholders(false)
                .setInitialLoadSizeHint(PAGES_CONTACTS_SIZE)
                .setPageSize(PAGES_CONTACTS_SIZE)
                .setPrefetchDistance(PAGES_CONTACTS_SIZE*2)
                .build()
    }

Here is the complete first example:

https://github.com/ibanarriolaIT/Marvel/tree/mvvm

And the complete second example:

https://github.com/AdrianMeizoso/Payment-App

Answer 1

We can not create ViewModel on our own. We need ViewModelProviders utility provided by Android to create ViewModels.

But ViewModelProviders can only instantiate ViewModels with no arg constructor.

So if I have a ViewModel with multiple arguments, then I need to use a Factory that I can pass to ViewModelProviders to use when an instance of MyViewModel is required.

For example -

public class MyViewModel extends ViewModel {
    private final MyRepo myrepo;
    public MyViewModel(MyRepo myrepo) {
         this.myrepo = myrepo;
    }
}

To instantiate this ViewModel, I need to have a factory which ViewModelProviders can use to create its instance.

ViewModelProviders Utility can not create instance of a ViewModel with argument constructor because it does not know how and what objects to pass in the constructor.