What's the correct way to consume a Kotlin flow vi...

# touchlab-tools

[dorche]

What's the correct way to consume a Kotlin flow via https://skie.touchlab.co/features/flows when in UIKit world? i.e. how would I do something like this?
(assuming everything else is like the example in the docs)

override func viewDidLoad() {
  for await it in flow {
    // No type cast (eg `it as! KotlinInt`) is needed because the generic type is preserved.
    let number: KotlinInt = it
    print(number)
  }
}

[streetsofboston]

Yes, but it must be called in an async context (Task).

[dorche]

yep, was curious if there's a "correct" way to do this? I can see Task.runDetached exists but the skie docs don't mention it or anything else. Didn't want to break some internal contract by running it detached

[dorche]

so is the correct way this then?

override func viewDidLoad() {
  ...
  Task.runDetached {
    for await it in flow {
      // No type cast (eg `it as! KotlinInt`) is needed because the generic type is preserved.
      let number: KotlinInt = it
      print(number)
    }
  }
}

[streetsofboston]

I think, but i'm not sure, using Task { ..... } should suffice, no need to use .detached (.runDetached is deprecated, IIRC).

[Filip Dolník]

Hi! SKIE converts Flows to AsyncSequences in a way that should be fully compatible with anything that you can do with AsyncSequences in Swift. That means that you shouldn’t be able to break it by doing anything that is supposed to work with regular AsyncSequences (including running it in background threads).

The same goes for how to use Flows in UIKit - just follow some guide for using AsnycSequences. For example this article appears to have some examples of that: https://dimillian.medium.com/use-task-with-asyncstream-and-avoid-retain-cycle-4c92dddf30ef