Hmm, I’m probably missing something, but it seems wrong that in these two cases `boundsInWindow` is ...

# compose

[Alexander Maryanovsky]

Hmm, I’m probably missing something, but it seems wrong that in these two cases boundsInWindow is not recomputed when the size changes (🧵)

[Alexander Maryanovsky]

Case 1 (just “remember”):

@Composable
fun DerivedStateTest(){
    var size by remember { mutableStateOf(180f) }

    Box(
        modifier = Modifier.fillMaxSize(),
        contentAlignment = Alignment.Center
    ){
        var coords by remember { mutableStateOf<LayoutCoordinates?>(null) }
        val boundsInWindow = remember(coords) {
            println("Recomputing")
            coords?.boundsInWindow()
        }

        println("coords: $coords")
        println("coords.boundsInWindow: ${coords?.boundsInWindow()}")
        println("boundsInWindow: $boundsInWindow")

        Box(
            modifier = Modifier
                .size(size.dp)
                .background(Color.Red)
                .onGloballyPositioned {
                    coords = it
                }
        ){
            Column(
                modifier = Modifier.align(Alignment.Center)
            ){
                Text(
                    text = "Drop here",
                )
                Button(
                    onClick = { size = 380-size }
                ){
                    Text("Change size")
                }
            }
        }
    }
}

[Alexander Maryanovsky]

Here I can at least understand why it’s happening, although it seems like a design bug. The LayoutCoordinates object is actually InnerNodeCoordinator which doesn’t actually change. It’s the same object on every onGloballyPositioned call.

[Alexander Maryanovsky]

But then it also doesn’t recompute boundsInWindow like this (Case 2)

val boundsInWindow by remember {
            derivedStateOf {
                println("Recomputing")
                coords?.boundsInWindow()
            }
        }

[Alexander Maryanovsky]

Shouldn’t derivedStateOf record the reads of the actual fields of LayoutCoordinates and re-run the computation when they change?

[Alexander Maryanovsky]

Ah, I think I see. What boundsInWindow looks at isn’t “state”. It’s NodeCoordinator._rectCache which is just a regular MutableRect

[Alexander Maryanovsky]

So it seems like a bug

[efemoney]

Why not just store the bounds in window instead of the coords? 🤔

[Alexander Maryanovsky]

Maybe we need both 🙂

[efemoney]

Ah thats true.

Anyways, it doesnt seem like a bug to me, since theres nothing in the public API that says that its driven via snapshot state. Possible t file a feature request though

[Alexander Maryanovsky]

A long, long time ago (about a year), @Adam Powell challenged me to find any APIs in compose that expose something other than either immutable state or state that notifies of changes (i.e. compose.runtime.State).

[Alexander Maryanovsky]

Now, obviously nowadays I understand he was right, but here we seem to have an example where it doesn’t hold.

[efemoney]

Understood. I believe i saw somewhere in that thread that there will be exceptions to the “_rule”_ where it makes sense, this is possibly one of those cases.

[Alexander Maryanovsky]

If there’s an exception, it should be heavily documented as such

[Loney Chou]

Note that under the hood LayoutCoordinates are `NodeCoordinator`s which won't change. And since LayoutCoordinates are not @Stable, retrieving info from them is not guaranteed to be seen as state reads, so derivedStateOf won't work. You need Modifier.onPlaced to reach this goal since it will be called on each placement.

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

I don’t love the fact that LayoutCoordinates don’t work with the snapshot state notification system either, although it is that way for a good reason: performance. The easiest way to handle this is to put the entire LayoutCoordinates object in a mutableStateOf(…, neverEqualsPolicy()), the key being that neverEqualsPolicy, so that the object will notify changes every time you write to it. Then your derivedStateOf should work as expected.

since LayoutCoordinates are not @Stable, retrieving info from them is not seen as state reads

Just to clarify, @Stable has nothing to do with whether something is or isn’t seen as a state read, or the snapshot system at all. A state read is always seen as a state read, and adding @Stable to something that’s not backed by snapshot state won’t magically add change notifications. That annotation is only a hint to composable functions about whether they can skip recomposing or not when passed the same object as a parameter.

[Alexander Maryanovsky]

Thanks for the explanation. I wish it was this clear in the docs.

[Loney Chou]

Sorry for being obscure 😅. When I said "since LayoutCoordinates are not `@Stable`", I meant "don't expect derivedStateOf to rerun if you retrieve info from this class". Because one of the @Stable requirements is "Changing to public properties should notify composition".