android-coroutines-expert

Coroutines & Concurrency Mastery ⚡🧵

A strict rulebook to prevent thread-blocking, memory leaks, and lost UI events in modern Android applications.

⚡ When to Use

• ViewModel Logic: Launching coroutines for network/database requests.
• One-Time UI Events: Showing Snackbars, Toasts, or Navigation triggers.
• Parallel Work: Running multiple non-blocking tasks.

🚦 Rule 1: The UI Event Dilemma (StateFlow vs Channel)

You must explicitly distinguish between UI State (things that persist on rotation) and UI Events (things that happen once, like a Toast or Navigation).

• UI STATE: Use MutableStateFlow.
• UI EVENTS: Use an un-buffered Channel exported as a Flow. NEVER use SharedFlow with replay = 0 or MutableStateFlow for one-time events, because if the app rotates, the event might be dropped or replayed twice.

The Golden Implementation:

class MyViewModel : ViewModel() {
    // 1. UI STATE
    private val _uiState = MutableStateFlow(MyState())
    val uiState = _uiState.asStateFlow()

    // 2. ONE-TIME EVENTS
    private val _uiEvent = Channel<MyAction>()
    val uiEvent = _uiEvent.receiveAsFlow()

    fun triggerSnackbar() {
        viewModelScope.launch {
             _uiEvent.send(MyAction.ShowSnackbar)
        }
    }
}

🚥 Rule 2: Dispatcher Discipline

Agents frequently launch heavy database or network calls on the default dispatcher (Dispatchers.Main inside a viewModelScope.launch).

• Rule: If you are using Retrofit or Room, they are naturally "main-safe", so viewModelScope.launch { } is fine.
• Rule: If you are doing manual file I/O, heavy JSON parsing, or bitmap manipulation, you MUST switch to Dispatchers.IO using withContext(Dispatchers.IO) { ... }.
• Rule: If you are doing CPU-heavy sorting or filtering on massive lists, use Dispatchers.Default.

🛑 Rule 3: Structured Concurrency

If an agent executes multiple independent API requests inside a viewModelScope.launch, and one fails, it cancels the entire scope/parent job!

The Anti-Pattern:

viewModelScope.launch {
    // If ApiA fails, ApiB is cancelled!
    val resultA = apiA.fetch() 
    val resultB = apiB.fetch()
}

The Architect's Standard (supervisorScope or async):

viewModelScope.launch {
    // Both attempt to run. If A fails, B continues successfully.
    supervisorScope {
        val deferredA = async { apiA.fetch() }
        val deferredB = async { apiB.fetch() }
        
        try { val a = deferredA.await() } catch (e: Exception) {}
        try { val b = deferredB.await() } catch (e: Exception) {}
    }
}

🔋 Rule 4: collectAsStateWithLifecycle

As enforced in our Code Review checklists, NEVER use collectAsState() in Compose UI. Always use collectAsStateWithLifecycle() to ensure Coroutines pause fetching when the screen goes to the background.