Any downsides to `operator fun <T> State<...

# compose

[sindrenm]

Any downsides to operator fun <T> State<T>.component1(): T = value? Being able to destructure a State is very useful when the value of the State is nullable. Such as:

val (content) = viewModel.content.collectAsState()

if (content != null) {
    SomeContent(content)
} else {
    MissingContent()
}

(Using a StateFlow here, but applies for any other way of retrieving a State as well.)

I don't find the property delegate very useful in this situation, as smart-casting can't be done in that case (custom getter and all that). Is this something that would make sense to even add to the standard lib?

[Zach Klippenstein (he/him) [MOD]]

what’s so bad about

val content = viewModel.content.collectAsState().value

Much less magical/clever and makes the code very readable if you don’t remember what the destructuring is for

[sindrenm]

Nothing bad about it, I just think the destructuring syntax reads a little better, is all. simple smile

[Zach Klippenstein (he/him) [MOD]]

I guess that’s mostly a matter of opinion, although the use of a fancy syntax feature to reference a single property is unidiomatic and seems like over-engineering to me. If i saw this code in a new codebase, I would have to look into what the destructuring function is doing. Vs just a property reference, which is pretty clear what it’s meant to do.

[sindrenm]

I guess that makes sense. Might be I find the destructuring natural because of React's approach with also grabbing the setter in the same way.

Translated, it'd be something like this:

val (content, setContent) = viewModel.content.collectAsState()

Where component2() would return a setter for the value.

[Zach Klippenstein (he/him) [MOD]]

I think MutableState supports that exact syntax. It makes a bit more sense to me there since there are two values (the problem destructuring was designed to solve), but i will admit i’m still not a huge fan of it since i think it’s more readable and not much more boilerplate to write { content = foo } when you need to update it.

[Adam Powell]

The property delegate is the intended way to do what you're doing here

[Adam Powell]

And yes, the value/setter thing is also supported

[Sean McQuillan [G]]

I put a section together on this: https://developer.android.com/jetpack/compose/state#use-rememeber-to-create-internal-state-in-composable

[Sean McQuillan [G]]

TL;DR pick whatever lhs and operator looks prettiest at the call site, there's no perf concerns