I am just fighting to get some file resource loade...

# multiplatform

[Michael Paus]

I am just fighting to get some file resource loaded into my app via moko-resources. I am wondering how I am supposed to access a file resource from common code if the FileResource method to get at the text of this file has a signature like this on desktop

fun readText(): String

but

fun readText(context: Context): String

on Android. On any other platform than Android there is no Context. Am I supposed to somehow wrap that again in some expect/actual code of my own, or what? I just don’t get it.

[Javier]

The real problem is where you are trying to get the final String value. You shouldn't get a String outside of the view IMO, instead you should use the common reference.

[Javier]

As it depends on the context, you can get problems getting it outside the view as it was shared long time ago about getting resources inside a ViewModel.

https://medium.com/androiddevelopers/locale-changes-and-the-androidviewmodel-antipattern-84eb677660d9

[Javier]

If the UI framework is shared, for example using Compose, it should be easy to access to the resource in common as you can have an implementation in Android using LocalContext . But it would be accessing in the view too

[Michael Paus]

Thanks, but I am not using any Android ViewModel and FileResource.readText is assumed to return the unmodified content of a file packaged with the application and interpreted as a String. (Actually I’d prefer to just get the content as a ByteArray but there is currently no code for that.) The raw content of this file should not be influenced by any of Androids various config changes as far as I understand it. So my question was only whether I am missing any API to access this file in a platform independent way or not.

[Javier]

Without dependency injection and/or a content-provider I don't think you can

[Javier]

https://developer.android.com/topic/libraries/app-startup

[Javier]

You can have a global nullable Context in a singleton and with that initializer change it to the context provided, so you can access it in your actual without passing it as parameter

var globalContext: Context? = null

class FileInitializer: Initializer<Context> {
    override fun create(context: Context): FileInitializer {
        globalContext = context
        return ...
    }

    override fun dependencies(): List<Class<out Initializer<*>>> = ...
}

[Kirill Kharkov]

What I usually do is introduce a class
in common:

expect class TextReader {
  fun readText(): String
}

then have a platform specific class that might have platform specific fields
Android:

actual class TextReader(private val context: Context) {
  fun readText(): String {
    return context.getString(...)
  }
}

and iOS

actual class TextReader {
  fun readText(): String {
  // iOS implementation goes here
  }
}

Similar concept is described in docs here