Bundler

Generates broilerplate code for intent and bundle builders and parsers. Autogeneration of this code at compile time ensures type-safety. Here's an example of this in Action.

@RequireBundler
class BookDetailActivity extends Activity {
  @Arg @State
  int id;
  @Arg @State
  String name;
  @Arg @Required(false) @State
  String author;

  @Override 
  public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
    super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
    setContentView(R.layout.activity_book_detail);
    Bundler.inject(this);
    // TODO Use fields...
  }
  
  @Override
  protected void onRestoreInstanceState(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
    super.onRestoreInstanceState(savedInstanceState);
    Bundler.restoreState(this, savedInstanceState);
  }

  @Override
  protected void onSaveInstanceState(Bundle outState) {
    super.onSaveInstanceState(outState);
    Bundler.saveState(this, outState);
  }
}

After defining the annotating the activity methods are added to the 'Bundler' class which help in building and parsing the intent for the activity. The above activity can be started as follows:

  Bundler.bookDetailActivity(1, "Hitchhiker's guide to galaxy")
    .author("Douglas Adams")
    .start();

Two classes are generated by the annotation processor. One Bundler class is generated which has the inject, restoreState and saveState methods of all annotated classes. And one BookDetailActivityBundler class is generated for BookDetailActivity. Here are the generated classes: BookDetailActivityBundler, Bundler

As you can see defining intent keys and parsing intents is not needed anymore. See Why Bundler? for a detailed explanation. State is also saved to bundle and retrieved backed.

If in future if the field id in BookDetailActivity for some reason has to be changed to type String then the class Bundler is regenerated and all the places where an int is being passed to the BookDetailActivity will throw a compile time error compared to the run time error it would have lead to in the normal scenario. The process for annotating Fragments and service is similar, but instead of .start() method fragment's builder will have .create() method. Here's an example for a fragment

@RequiresBundler
class BookDetailsFragment extends Fragment {
  @Arg 
  int id;
  @Arg 
  String book;
  @Arg @Required(false)
  String author;
  
  @Override
  public View onCreateView(LayoutInflater inflater, ViewGroup container, Bundle savedInstanceState) {
    Bundler.inject(this);
    // TODO inflate and return the view and use the fields
  }
}

The above fragment can be created as follows:

BookDetailsFragment fragment = Bundler.bookDetailsFragment(1, "Harry Potter")
                                  .author("J. K. Rowling")
                                  .create();

This would create a BookDetailsFragment that have arguments set to the above values.

The process of documenting and writing tests is on going. The library is currently being used in our app Define and another library Portal. Any PRs, suggestions are more than welcome.

Download

Gradle:

buildscript {
  repositories {
    mavenCentral()
  }
  dependencies {
    classpath 'com.neenbedankt.gradle.plugins:android-apt:1.8'
  }
}

apply plugin: 'com.neenbedankt.android-apt'

ext {
  bundlerVersion = '0.1.1'
}

dependencies {
  compile "in.workarounds.bundler:bundler-annotations:$bundlerVersion"
  apt "in.workarounds.bundler:bundler-compiler:$bundlerVersion"
  
  // if using Parceler library then uncomment
  // compile "in.workarounds.bundler:bundler-parceler:$bundlerVersion"
}

What can be an @Arg or @State?

The short answer is anything that can be put into a Bundle. All primitives, String, any object that implements Parcelable, Serializable, ArrayList<Parcelable>, ArrayList<Object> (as ArrayList implements Serializable) can all be annotated with @Arg or @State.

Custom Types for @Arg and @State

If for some reason you have a type that cannot be made a Parcelable or it has a different mechanism to serialize data that the library is not supporting, you can define your own custom serializer for the type. Let's consider the simple example of Date object, it can't be put into a bundle directly, but it'd be nice if the calling code and the activity can directly use the object as Date

@RequireBundler
public class DemoActivity extends Activity {
  @Arg
  Date date;

  @Override
  public void onCreate(Bundle savedState) {
    setContentView(R.layout.activity_demo);
    Bundler.inject(this);
  }
}

The above code gives a compile error saying Date is an unrecognized type. To overcome this you can define your own Serializer that knows how to put and get a Date from a bundle. Here's a possible implementation of the serializer:

/**
 * This class must have an empty constructor which will be used to instantiate this.
 */
public class DateSerializer implements Serializer<Date> {

  @Override
  public void put(String key, Date value, Bundle bundle) {
    bundle.putLong(key, value.getTime());
  }

  @Override
  public Date get(String key, Bundle bundle) {
    return new Date(bundle.getLong(key));
  }
}

Now while using @Arg for the Date date field, provide an argument to @Arg telling the library to use DateSerializer as the serializer. In the above DemoActivity change:

  @Arg(serializer = DateSerializer.class)
  Date date;

Now this activity can be started directly by passing date to it's builder as below:

  Bundler.demoActivity(new Date(System.currentTimeMillis())).start();

A serializer is already included in the bundler-annotations package for serializing List<? extends Parcelable>.

  @Arg(serializer = ParcelListSerializer.class)
  List<Foo> foos; //where Foo implements Parcelable

For putting a type annotated with @Parcel from Parceler library add the depedency

  compile "in.workarounds.bundler:bundler-parceler:$bundlerVersion"

This artifact containes a serializer ParcelerSerializer use it as follows:

  @Arg(serializer = ParcelerSerializer.class)
  Dog dog; // where Dog is annotated with @Parcel

Additional options to @RequireBundler

The @RequireBundler annotation accepts four arguments:

• requireAll (boolean defaults to true) when set to true all fields are assumed to be as required unless specified using @Required(false), similarly when set to false all fields are assumed optional unless specified using @Required(true). This is there just for convenience if you have more fields that are required set this to true and if you have more optional fields set this to false

• bundlerMethod (String defaults to "") this is to specify the name of the method that corresponds to this class in the generated Bundler class. The above BookDetailActivity by default generates a method Bundler.bookDetailActivity(...), but you can specify a different name by annotation it with @RequireBundler(bundlerMethod="detailActivity") this generates the method Bundler.detailActivity(...) which can be used to start the activity. This is also useful when there are two activities with the same name. If there are two BookDetailActivitys in the project you have to specify a different name for atleast one of them.

• inheritArgs (boolean defaults to true) If the super class of the current class is also annotated with @RequireBundler and the super class also contains fields annotated with @Arg then those fields will also be considered as arguments of current class. Discussed further below.

• inheritState (boolean defaults to true) Similar to inheritArgs. Fields in the super class annotated with @State are also saved and restored in the subclass.

Inheritence

For example, consider the following classes BaseActivity and ChildActivity

@RequireBundler(requireAll=false)
public class BaseActivity extends Activity {
  @Arg
  int first;
  @Arg @Required(true)
  int second;
  @Arg @Required(false)
  int third;
  
  // rest of the class
}

@RequireBundler(inheritArgs=true)
public class ChildActivity extends BaseActivity {
  @Arg
  String fourth;
  
  // rest of the class
}

The above code leads to two generated methods in Bundler that can be used as below:

// passing first and third values is optional
Bundler.baseActivity(2).first(1).third(3).start(ctx);
// only the value of field second needs to be passed to start the activity
Bundler.baseActivity(2).start(ctx);

// passing third is optional
Bundler.childActivity(1, 2, "4").third(3).start(ctx);
// where as first, second and fourth are required to start the activity
Bundler.childActivity(1, 2, "4").start(ctx);

In the above code the activities are started by passing the values first = 1, second = 2, third = 3, fourth = "4" and ctx is Context object.

Few things to note here are:

• the order of fields in the generated method is parent fields followed by child fields in the order they are defined.
• the global requireAll behavior is not inherited, where as the field-wise @Required behavior is inherited. So if it's required that ChildActivity does not require the field second to be necessarily passed in the intent then simply redefine that field in ChildActivity as follows:

// inheriArgs is true by default
@RequireBundler
public class ChildActivity extends BaseActivity {
  @Arg @Required(false)
  int second;
  @Arg 
  String fourth;
  
  // rest of the class
}

ChildActivity can now be started as

// passing second and third is optional
Bundler.childActivity(1, "4").second(2).third(3).start(ctx);
// only first and fourth are required fields
Bundler.childActivity(1, "4").start(ctx);

License

Copyright 2015 Workarounds

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
You may obtain a copy of the License at

   http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
limitations under the License.