Android data-binding (similar to WPF)?

Question

I have searched for some similar questions before posting - however I have a general question when it comes to Android and data binding (and the other answers I check did no

Answer 1

I realize this is some years later but faced with the same issues I ran across the following which may help lessen the load.

RoboBinding - handles binding - as mentioned above RoboGuice - does dependency injection

There is a very nice video presentation of RoboBinding that will help explain what and how.

I am not affiliated with either effort but they do look promising for those folks still trying to resolve the binding issues, especially on involved code. RoboBinding also handles bidirectional updates.

Answer 2

Since you first asked your question, the landscape has changed a lot.
Most importantly Stuart Lodge gave us MVVMCross.

This project provides a cross-platform mvvm mobile development framework built on top of Silverlight for WP7, Mono for Android and MonoTouch for iOS, and the WinRT XAML framework for Windows 8 Store applications This project makes extensive use of Portable Class Libraries to provide maintainable cross platform C# native applications.

It provides data binding in your Views against ViewModels

For example, it enables the following:

<EditText
    android:layout_width="fill_parent"
    android:layout_height="wrap_content"
    local:MvxBind="{'Text':{'Path':'Query','Mode':'TwoWay'}}" />

Resources:

Github Page: https://github.com/slodge/MvvmCross

Presentation: http://slodge.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/mvvmcross-video-presentation-xaminar.html

And a very good introductional tutorial: Building Android Apps with MVVM and Data Binding

Answer 3

In addition to Oleksii's answer, for those who want to see a sample project (it seems Google hasn't provided any sample project yet), I just made one and pushed it to GitHub.

A few notes:

• classpath "com.android.databinding:dataBinder:1.0-rc0" doesn't work for me so I use classpath group: 'com.android.databinding', name: 'dataBinder', version: '1.0-rc0'
• Need Java 7 +
• If you get errors, try clean/rebuild.
• Don't forget to implement android.databinding.Observable or extends BaseObservable if you need the ability to notify when data changes.
• minSdkVersion is 7. It's a support lib.
• My project doesn't follow MVVM, it just uses data binding. Added MVVM sample.

Answer 4

Well, my Android-Binding project is trying to do data-binding via XML layout. Because there's no build-in method provided by Google (and I can't foresee that Google will do so), that's the reason I started this project.

Answer 5

Reading a bit about this topic, I just found RoboBinding, a "data-binding Presentation Model framework" for Android.

Similar to the Android-binding project, you can bind properties (one-way or two-way) and events to your views in XML using an extra namespace.

Although it is no built-in approach either, it might be a great help for you.

Answer 6

Android M will provide powerful library for data binding!

It's available now in dev-preview version.

It looks amazing inside xml and java files:

<TextView android:layout_width="wrap_content"
    android:layout_height="wrap_content"
    android:text="@{user.firstName}"
    />

Java bean:

public class User {
   private final String firstName;
   private final String lastName;
   public User(String firstName, String lastName) {
       this.firstName = firstName;
       this.lastName = lastName;
   }
   public String getFirstName() {
       return this.firstName;
   }
   public String getLastName() {
       return this.lastName;
   }
}

Binding:

@Override
protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
   super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
   ActivityMainBinding binding = DataBindingUtil.setContentView(this, R.layout.main_activity);
   User user = new User("Test", "User");
   binding.setUser(user);
}