Is it possible to pass an argument when navigating...

# compose

[Matti MK]

Is it possible to pass an argument when navigating to a separate NavGraph route? I’d ideally like to have something as follows:

navigation(
        route = "routeToNavigateTo",
        startDestination = "startDestination/{argument}"
    ) {
        composable(route = "startDestination/{argument}" ... ) { ... }
    }

[Matti MK]

Apparently yes.

Only route needs to have an argument provided, it’ll then be passed on to the startDestination.

Something like:

navigation(
        route = "routeToNavigateTo/{argument}",
        startDestination = "startDestination"
    ) {
        composable(route = "startDestination" ... ) { 
           // get arg from navBackStackEntry here
        }
    }

[Ian Lake]

You can directly navigate to your startDestination/{argument} destination, you never need to go through the graph

[Matti MK]

Well, that explains the lack of SO answers for the question 😅 For some reason I found it logical to navigate to a graph and then let the existing graph definition (navigation(...)) handle the startDestination.

[Lasse Magnussen]

Blast from the past. I’m running into a similar problem now.

It’s basically the same, but the only difference MIGTH be that it’s a nav graph inside an Activity.
So I use createGraph to create the graph, but my first destination wants data from the intent.

The graph is also reused elsewhere, nested in a different activity.

And I must admit; I don’t fully grasp what “directly navigate to your startDestination/{argument} means — It makes sense to me for a nested nav graph where the entire graph starts off with some other start destination.

Trying to convert some XML nav graph to Kotlin…

[Lasse Magnussen]

I figured out the missing piece of the puzzle for me.

I was setting up the nav graph by assigning straight to NavController.graph - while this works there’s no way to pass in the startDestinationArgs — these can, however, be supplied in NavController.setGraph
I simply passed along intent.extras and everything worked like a charm…