Has anyone tried creating a desktop/Android selectable listitem? On Android, that would normally be ...

# compose-desktop

[Mike Dawson]

Has anyone tried creating a desktop/Android selectable listitem? On Android, that would normally be triggered by long press. On Desktop, should check when someone is clicking to see if they are also holding shift and/or ctrl key. Googling / github search didn't yield much

[Joel Denke]

Isnt it possible just detect regular keyboard chars pressed in Compose for desktop? Check if whatever combo pressed, and if user has that hold in and also click/long click they get multi selected?

[Joel Denke]

Such as https://developer.android.com/reference/kotlin/androidx/compose/ui/input/key/package-summary#(androidx.compose.ui.Modif[…]KeyEvent(kotlin.Function1)

[Joel Denke]

Box(
    Modifier
        .onKeyEvent {
            if (it.isShiftPressed) {
                true
            } else {
                false
            }
        }
        .focusable()
)

[Mike Dawson]

It is possible to get key events - but here we are talking about both keyboard and mouse

[Mike Dawson]

Pressing shift on its own is not a keyboard event

[Joel Denke]

Pressing shift on its own, why isnt that a key event? Mouse is just a touch event can combine with key events?

[Mike Dawson]

Shift is a modifier key

[Mike Dawson]

hence it being represented by isShiftPressed

[Mike Dawson]

If I type "M" - you wouldn't expect two events (one for shift, another for m). You'd get one event with isShiftPressed set accordingly

[Joel Denke]

From what I recall, can combine LocalWindowInfo.current.keyboardModifiers and stuff like PointerMatcher.mouse(PointerButton.Secondary)

[Mike Dawson]

Thank you! LocalWindowInfo would work. Can be checked when I get the click event

[Joel Denke]

Here some samples:
https://github.com/JetBrains/compose-multiplatform/tree/master/tutorials/Mouse_Events#new-experimental-onclick-hand[…]-only-for-desktop-jvm-platform

[Mike Dawson]

There is also something useful here:

https://github.com/JetBrains/compose-multiplatform/blob/master/tutorials/Mouse_Events/README.md

[Mike Dawson]

Just found the same...

[Joel Denke]

But yeah its a little problematic smartphones and desktop not behaves same, no real difference imo. For me mouse is like regular touch events, with extra applied hover variant vs long pressed. Odd CMP not offers a crossover API merging these into one, with smart modifiers of multi combinations.

[Joel Denke]

Implementing Multi select composable I guess would need to have expect/actual and overload desktop variant for this scenario.

[Mike Dawson]

It's going to be interesting...

[Mike Dawson]

Indeed it would be nice to have something to wrap these generic differences between platforms... whether it is an email list, file list, shopping list, etc. the use case is pretty much the same

[Alexander Maryanovsky]

Umm, you do get a key pressed/released event when pressing/releasing SHIFT.

[Alexander Maryanovsky]

And also you have PointerEvent.keyboardModifiers.isShiftPressed

[Mike Dawson]

I haven't gotten quite that far yet... dealing with showing the selection background on a ListItem

[Joel Denke]

I guess already looked at it, but can use Modifier.selectable on lets say Cards to make them selectable btw. The tricky part imo is to remember the items selected once sending information forward, especially if you also offer re-ordering while multi select at the same time. Did this a couple of times, and it beats me everytime 😄

[Mike Dawson]

One tricky part is the item is both clickable normally (e.g. clicking the item in the list goes to the detail screen) and selectable (if using a long press on Android or shift/ctrl click on desktop)

[Joel Denke]

Yeah and next madness think is scrolling the list, so need to detect if actually click/longpress. And also click to close the selectable mode 😄

[Joel Denke]

But I think would be possible to combine custom Modifier, like Modifier.multiSelect which detecting either long press or cmd/control/shift + click. I think that could work in commonMain actually, as they will not intefere, and would make sense having in smartphone as you can use like BLE keyboard on your smartphone as well 😄 Like shift click could work in Android as well.

[Mike Dawson]

Yes, you're right, Android can work with a mouse and keyboard. Have done that. Feels like using a computer for a bit. But user expectations when it comes to handling keyboard input seem more forgiving

[Joel Denke]

Then we having Touchpad as well, with multi touch gestures for desktop to act similar to smartphones 😜