DEV Community

Bigyan Thapa
Bigyan Thapa

Posted on

6 1

Common android utility functions made easier with kotlin-extensions

As kotlin has taken over most of Android development ecosystem, by now we all are aware of all the goodies that kotlin offers. One of the most liked goodies is extension-functions.
Following are some of the extension-functions that come in handy in day-to-day android application development.

Showing/ hiding views

fun View.visibleOrGone(show: Boolean = false) {
  this.visibility = if(show) {
    View.VISIBLE
  } else {
    View.GONE
  }

Hide Keyboard

fun View.hideKeyboard() {
  (context.getSystemService(Context.INPUT_METHOD_SERVICE) as? InputMethodManager)?.let { inputManager -> 
    inputManager.hideSoftInputFromWindow(windowToken, 0)
  }
}

EditText after text changed

We can pass the function to be performed after edit text input changes as closure.

fun EditText.afterTextChanged(afterTextChanged: (String) -> Unit) {
  this.addTextChangedListener(object : TextWatcher {
    override fun afterTextChanged(s: Editable?) {
      afterTextChanged.invoke(s?.toString())
    }
    override fun beforeTextChanged(s: CharSequence?, start: Int, count: Int, after: Int) { // na
    }
    override fun onTextChanged(s: CharSequence?, start: Int, before: Int, count: Int) { // na
    }
  })
}

RecyclerView set divider

dividerResId is the divider drawable if we have to provide custom divider.

fun RecyclerView.setDivider(dividerResId: Int? = null, orientation: Int = DividerItemDecoration.VERTICAL) {

  val dividerItemDecoration = DividerItemDecoration(this.context, orientation)

  dividerResId?.let { resId ->
    this.context.getDrawableResource(resId)
      ?.let { divider ->
        dividerItemDecoration.setDrawable(divider)
      }
  }
  this.addItemDecoration(dividerItemDecoration)
}

Accessing resources with ContextCompact

fun Context.getColorResource(colorRes: Int): Int {
  return ContextCompat.getColor(this, colorRes)
}

fun Context.getDrawableResource(drawableRes: Int): Drawable? {
  return ContextCompat.getDrawable(this, drawableRes)
}

TextView extensions to set drawable

fun TextView.setDrawable(
  @DrawableRes
  drawable: Int, start: Boolean, end: Boolean, top: Boolean, bottom: Boolean
) {
  when {
    start  -> this.setCompoundDrawablesRelativeWithIntrinsicBounds(drawable, 0, 0, 0)
    end    -> this.setCompoundDrawablesRelativeWithIntrinsicBounds(0, 0, drawable, 0)
    top    -> this.setCompoundDrawablesRelativeWithIntrinsicBounds(0, drawable, 0, 0)
    bottom -> this.setCompoundDrawablesRelativeWithIntrinsicBounds(0, 0, 0, drawable)
  }
  this.compoundDrawablePadding = 8
}

I hope this will be helpful. I will add more in future. Please provide feedback in comments.

Heroku

Simplify your DevOps and maximize your time.

Since 2007, Heroku has been the go-to platform for developers as it monitors uptime, performance, and infrastructure concerns, allowing you to focus on writing code.

Learn More

Top comments (0)

A Workflow Copilot. Tailored to You.

Pieces.app image

Our desktop app, with its intelligent copilot, streamlines coding by generating snippets, extracting code from screenshots, and accelerating problem-solving.

Read the docs