Hi all :wave: — I’m trying to build a synchroniser...

# android

[Luke Carpenter]

Hi all 👋 — I’m trying to build a synchroniser with Jetpack’s WorkManager for sync’ing records created locally/saved in Room with a remote server, when the internet connection is available. Room represents my “unsyncronised” records as a Flow<List<LocalRecord>>, instead of a List<LocalRecord>, and if I try to collect on the flow it blocks the worker.

Is this a good idea? If so, how do I retrieve the most up-to-date list of unsync’d `LocalRecord`’s from the flow, without blocking the worker? I’ve tried collectLatest and last, both of which don’t behave as expected.

If this isn’t a good idea, would it be better to spawn one worker for each record, at the risk of potentially overloading my server if a large number (200+) of records need syncing? I’ve gone through the nowinandroid implementation, and it’s doing some particularly fruity stuff with a DelegatingWorker I don’t really understand 😵‍💫

[Chrimaeon]

Then just use a suspend function instead of one returning a flow. You can then use a CoroutineWorker to have a scope for your suspending calls.
https://developer.android.com/reference/kotlin/androidx/work/CoroutineWorker

[Luke Carpenter]

so I can return just a List<LocalRecord> from my Room DAO then, instead of a Flow?

[Luke Carpenter]

Yes, I can just return a List<LocalRecord> and I was making my life harder for myself with the Flow 😅 😅 😅

Thank you Christian! 🙇