Hi all :android-wave: , `stringResource()` throws ...

# compose-android

[Abhimanyu]

Hi all 👋 ,
stringResource() throws Resources.NotFoundException exception when the id passed is not valid.
Not to catch this? Adding try catch gives this error,

Try catch is not supported around composable function invocations.

[Stylianos Gakis]

I'd you look at what it does internally, does it look like you could do this try catch outside of a composable context?
Perhaps grab the resources in composition, and then use a try catch inside a remember which does the fetching?
I've never tried smth like this, or try catching inside a remember lambda, but perhaps worth a shot

[Abhimanyu]

stringResource() can not be moved inside a remember as it needs Composable scope.
I am not sure if I understood what you meant.

Can you please help share an example?

[Stylianos Gakis]

I meant look at what stringResource does internally

[Stylianos Gakis]

https://cs.android.com/androidx/platform/frameworks/support/+/androidx-main:compose/ui/ui/src/androidMain/kotlin/androidx/compose/ui/res/Resources.android.kt;l=34

https://cs.android.com/androidx/platform/frameworks/support/+/androidx-main:compose/ui/ui/src/androidMain/kotlin/androidx/compose/ui/res/StringResources.android.kt;l=35

[Stylianos Gakis]

resources.getString shouldn't be a composable function

[Abhimanyu]

Okay. So the suggestion is to use,

val resources = LocalContext.current.resources
val string = remember {
    try {
        resources.getString(R.string.string_id)
    } catch (exception: Resources.NotFoundException) {
        null
    }
}

instead of

val string = stringResource(
    id = R.string.string_id,
)

I wonder why this is not the default internal implementation for stringResource() 🤔 .

[Stylianos Gakis]

Yeah that was my idea, does this work?

Also I don't even know when you have scenarios where the ID isn't found, which scenarios are those?

[Abhimanyu]

Will try this and share an update later.

The scenario is where I need to show some strings based on conditions, I share a UI state data class instance from the ViewModel.
As the data will not be available till all the conditions are executed, the initial state will have a default value as -1 .

I have changed that logic to make default as null and I do null checks before using stringResource() now and it works as expected.

But, I was curious to understand the recommendation on exception handling in Compose.

[Stylianos Gakis]

It wasn't some recommendation btf, I just suggested doing that since you can't do a try catch in compose code. And I was also curious myself to see if it'd work 😅