Hello, I'm what's the recommended method to navigate/route views in desktop? I've tried to import `a...

# compose-desktop

[Glenn Martin]

Hello, I'm what's the recommended method to navigate/route views in desktop? I've tried to import androidx.navigation:navigation-compose but getting aar gradle import issues. I've been told this is not available for desktop yet. All I want to do is have sidebar items and be able to change the view on the main right panel. Most of the examples are using some sort of state but for the same view only such as Issues or Code. Also If I have an onClick method it tells me this can't return a composable as I've tried to do it that way, passing in a composable or returning a composable upon clicking

[Paul Woitaschek]

What about just using a Stack<Screen>?

[Glenn Martin]

oh I didn't know about this? are there any guides?

[Paul Woitaschek]

Well it's desktop you don't have the save instance requirements

[Paul Woitaschek]

Just use a stack and render the top element

[Paul Woitaschek]

Manipulate the state of the top element in your onClick

[Paul Woitaschek]

Or add a new state on top of the stack and render it

[Arkadii Ivanov]

But do you need a stack at all? According to your description, you just need to replace current view. So it is just something like State<@Composable () -> Unit>.

[Glenn Martin]

@Arkadii Ivanov oh so the main body is added ina state and can return a Composable?

[Glenn Martin]

and upon an click I can modify that state and hence the view would change?

[Arkadii Ivanov]

Yep. You also need to render the view. Like state.value()

[Glenn Martin]

ok thanks for that, will give it ago.

[Paul Woitaschek]

To me it reads it's overcomplicating things

[Paul Woitaschek]

What is it exactly that's shown in onClick?

[Glenn Martin]

@Paul Woitaschek just doing simple routing, sidebar has various items on click each should display it's own view on the main body view, so window is one row with two columns

[Glenn Martin]

Navigation seems like what I want but unfortunately it's not supported on desktop

[Arkadii Ivanov]

I doubt you need a navigation, since navigation normally means back stack, but looks like you don't need one. So simply have a state with currently active "view" and replace it when needed. A view can be represented as a descriptive sealed class with all possible variants, or as @Composable function.
But in case you need navigation, here is an open issue to follow: https://github.com/JetBrains/compose-jb/issues/85

[Glenn Martin]

thanks @Arkadii Ivanov this might get me over the hurdle for the moment, but navigation would be nice especially param/route based which I'll need in the future, then again I'm not a mobile dev so playing around with desktop for now to get an idea what I can build/do with it

[Paul Woitaschek]

Well there is this:
https://github.com/zsoltk/compose-router

[Paul Woitaschek]

Its not jvm but I guess its portable quite easy

[Glenn Martin]

oh nice, what you mean by not jvm though?

[Glenn Martin]

looks like it's in kotlin so 'jvm' right?

[Arkadii Ivanov]

It is an Android library which produces aar

[Glenn Martin]

I see thanks

[Glenn Martin]

@Arkadii Ivanov do you have an example of a project using this

State<@Composable () -> Unit>

[Arkadii Ivanov]

No I don't. It's actually better to represent all screens as a sealed class, and use State<Screen>.

[Glenn Martin]

I see

[Glenn Martin]

something like this here? https://proandroiddev.com/android-jetpack-compose-exploring-state-based-ui-e1d970471d0a

[Glenn Martin]

this looks like the winner, I will try this later on today and report back to see how it went

[Glenn Martin]

hope viewModel is supported by desktop though