My stackoverflow question didn't get any traction so I am hoping that someone will help here https://stackoverflow.com/questions/72843100/kotlin-flow-emit-loading-state-for-every-emission

There you go 🙂 https://stackoverflow.com/a/72903911/19505834

@uli thanks a lot. Looks like a great answer to me!

in our projects, we put the state handling into the repository and have a helper along those lines:

suspend <T> fun loadData<T>(stateFlow: DataState, dataLoader: suspend () -> T) {
  try { 
    if (stateFlow.value == DataState.Loading) return
    stateFlow.value = DataState.Loading
    val result = dataLoader()
    stateFlow.value = DataState.Loaded(result)
  } catch (t: Throwable) {
    stateFlow.value = DataState.Error(t)
  }
}

Then your actual repository method would go like this:

val topRatedMoviesDataState : DataState<List<Movie>>
suspend fun loadTopRatedMovies() {
  loadData(topRatedMoviesDataState, ::loadTopRatedMoviesFromNetwork)
}

And your ViewModel would just subscribe to topRatedMoviesDataState.