I am bit confused on what Coroutine flow should I ...

# coroutines

[K Merle]

I am bit confused on what Coroutine flow should I take to replace LiveData. Flow, StateFlow, SharedFlow?

[andylamax]

StateFlow is a good substitute for LiveData

[Erik]

Note that there are a few important differences. Some of which are listed on the Android developers documentation site. Are you looking for similar behaviour of the live data? Or on lifecycle events?

[K Merle]

I am looking for the Flow type that can carry my network result to the compose function, the one that is most appropriate 😄 @Erik

[louiscad]

SharedFlow if there's no initial value, StateFlow otherwise.

[Erik]

There are many more differences wrt LiveData, especially regarding behaviour

[Adam Powell]

SharedFlow and LiveData are not substitutes for one another. SharedFlow does not hold a current value to emit upon subscription by multiple consumers over time.

[louiscad]

@Adam Powell except if its replay is set to 1.

[Adam Powell]

which isn't useful if you're trying to replace a usage of LiveData and intend to consume it from Compose. LiveData supporting an uninitialized state conflated with a current null value (and its generally loose treatment of nullability) was a design flaw. Carrying that forward by using SharedFlow with a replay is just going to lead to confusion in the app data flow.

[louiscad]

SharedFlow doesn't conflate the fact that the initial value isn't there yet, even when the type is nullable, since the replay is also a list that can be accessed, and can be empty.

Agreed for Compose, getting a StateFlow that represents at least loading and empty without ambiguity is best. Bonus if you can represent cached data, and its freshness, plus estimates of loading time to expect.