Dummy question… Do I have to pass my `navController` to all my screens (of course if I want to navig...

# compose

[nglauber]

Dummy question… Do I have to pass my navController to all my screens (of course if I want to navigate to somewhere else from that screen)?
Should I create a compositionLocalOf for it?

[Abhishek Dewan]

Yes ! you can see an example of it here https://github.com/abhishekdewan101/Scout/blob/6d80887318bea61b8b1ad40342d04cdeafe36e35/app/src/main/java/com/abhishek101/gamescout/features/mainapp/navigator/MainNavigator.kt#L26

[nglauber]

Thanks @Abhishek Dewan 😉
I created a helper function based on your code:

@Composable
fun withNavigator(navController: NavController, content: @Composable () -> Unit) {
    CompositionLocalProvider(LocalMainNavigator provides navController) {
        content()
    }
}

and use it like this:

withNavigator(navController) {
    WelcomeScreen()
}

[nglauber]

humm… if you wrap the NavHost with this function, it works think smart
so don’t need to wrap all screens…

[Francesc]

The recommendation is to not pass the nav controller around and instead provide callbacks that will navigate to your destinations

[Ian Lake]

Yep, the guide specifically suggests against passing your NavController down to any screen Composable: https://developer.android.com/jetpack/compose/navigation#testing

[Abhishek Dewan]

Interestingly I saw that guide and I tried doing what it suggested and I found that my code got messy. Since I like breaking my composable into smaller chunks, it meant passing the lambda down 3 / 4 levels of composable’s just to have a button trigger a navigation event. Is there a different pattern of breaking composable’s that can avoid the code looking messy?

[Ian Lake]

every reusable composable should be taking state in and sending events out, that's true whether you're using Navigation or not. That's how you build Composables you can test in isolation and a natural part of Compose code

[Ian Lake]

That general concept is covered at https://developer.android.com/jetpack/compose/state#stateless-composables

[Abhishek Dewan]

This is indeed helpful ! I guess since I’ve not tried my hand at writing tests for the composable’s I’ve been building (still learning) I haven’t run into issues with this approach (which I am sure I will) It would interesting for me to take my project and move it away from using `compositionLocalOf`for the navigation code and see how it goes. Perhaps I can report back to this thread when I’ve done so 🙂

[nglauber]

Thanks @Ian Lake 👍

[Ian Lake]

The same testing story also applies to previews, which is definitely recommend taking heavy advantage of to iterate quickly

[nglauber]

Another question: I’m defining the “back button” on the TopAppBar. Once I’m not passing the navController to my screens, should I pass a callback to pop current the screen?

[Francesc]

do your screen explicitly need to call "back" as opposed to the user tapping the app bar's back button or the system's back button?

[nglauber]

I meant that arrow back button on the TopBar

[Francesc]

you can do the same, pass a lambda to your custom app bar that navigates back when called

[Ian Lake]

If your TopAppBar is part of each individual screen, then yeah, you'd want to hook the click events there up to a lambda that calls navController.navigateUp()

[nglauber]

@Ian Lake yeah… that’s the case… I just wouldn’t want to pass this lamba to all screens 😞

[Ian Lake]

How else would you test your TopAppBar? 😝

[Ian Lake]

Navigation certainly supports both a global TopAppBar at a Scaffold level outside of your NavHost (that'd be appropriate if ~every screen has the same type of bar - and why the rememberNavController() pattern exists - to hoist the state out of the NavHost) or the separate TopAppBar in each screen (which is better if you need something custom in each)

[nglauber]

Make sense… 🙃

[bryankeltonadams]

Ian Lake, currently I have a global TopAppBar with a Scaffold in my MainApp composable, at what point do you determine if a TopAppBar is custom enough that you'd want to switch over to a per screen TopAppBar, running into wanting to show a "Are you sure" confirmation Dialog when pressing the back button in a Screen, the backHandler works just fine for the back button, but not the global TopAppBar which just does "navController.popBackStack()" for now. At this point I'm not sure if I should try to pass a function for what the backButton does all the way up to the main composable, or refactor to a per screen composable Sorry this thread is old and I already asked a related question in the compose-android channel.