What are the pros and cons of android data-binding?

Both of my colleague and I have experience in MVVM of Web App, while we are new to native android development. Now we have contrary opinions about android data-binding -- I'm a fan of it while he is not.

My Arguments:

• Reduces boilerplate code which in turns brings
  • Less coupling
  • Stronger readability
• Powerful, easy to implement custom attribute and custom view
• Even faster than findViewById (details)

His Arguments:

• The auto-generated .class increases app size.
• Harder to debug

I've made some investigation but there are not many discussions about it. Now I want to collect the pros and cons of android data-binding.

Aspects of discussion include but are not limited to:

• unit test
• app size
• performance
• learning curve
• readability
• coupling

Solution 1:

I will comment on your arguments first then I will state my opinion:

1.Remove boilerplate code - it will remove some it will just move some in the xml or it will require additional classes. So you have to be careful and balance the use of data binding.

2.Stronger readability - depends if you are a new developer then you may find it easy to learn it but if you previously worked on android you will need extra time to learn it.

3.Powerful - the code has more power, you can implement whatever you like in code. Think about it like this, everything you implement using data binding has a code equivalent (it might be longer and more code to write), but the revers is not valid.

4.Even faster than findViewById - comparing the speed between these two, in my opinion is useless, you will never notice the difference, if you see some difference, then one of the implementation is wrong.

5.Auto generated class - it's true it will increase the app size, but again only if you have tons of it it will matter. It's true that on the android dev web site they state that it's kind of bad to use libraries that create autogenerated code or annotations that will generate extra code.

6.Hard to debug - depends, like readability, of what you are used to, heck debugging is hard either way for some problems, and you will get better by debugging not by using a different library.

So this is pure my opinion, I've developed many apps using different libraries and different approaches, and they all had pros and cons, but what I've learn: balance everything, don't use tons of libraries, don't waste time implementing things that are implemented already and work well, don't "decouple everything", don't "couple" everything, don't use code only, don't try to "generate" everything.

I think it's quite wrong, and you can get a wrong idea, if you ask for 'pros & cons' about some library/implementation, because usually it won't be impartial, you will get a lot of pros from somebody who used the library in a specific way and it worked and others will give you cons because they used different and it didn't work.

So in conclusion, I think you should check what the library can do for you and what can't do for you and decide if it's good for your setup. In other words, you should decide if a library is good for you not other people ;).

Update - 8 August 2018

First of all I still stand with my initial conclusion, balance is the key in these kind of situations, but in my case, data-binding speed-up a little bit the development process and also improved it. Here are a few new points that you should all think about.

1. Testing the UI -- with data-binding it's much more easy to test the UI, but data-binding it's not enough for that, you also need a good architecture and using the Google suggested architecture will show the actual power of data-binding.

2. The most visible changes were provided for points 2 & 5 from my original answer. It kind of was easier to read the code after we decided to use data-binding, and the most important thing here is: we as a team decided that we will use data-binding and after that, we kind of expected to have most of the trivial and basic UI setup in the XML file.

For the debugging part, here's a little bit tricky, Android Studio has a lot to improve on the errors and autocomplete for the data-binding but the most common errors you'll get them after the first 2-3 occurrences. Also I've learned that a "clean project" form time to time, helps A LOT.

3. Another point that you'll have to take in consideration is the project configuration to use data-binding, right now AS (3.1) supports by default data-binding (just set a flag in graddle) for Java, but I had some issues with Kotlin, after a bit of search here on SO, I managed to fix everything.

As a second conclusion (from my original post), if you can and the project deadline/requirements/etc allows you to try data-binding, go for it it will worth (unless you do some really stupid stuff :)) ).

Solution 2:

Even if i like danypata's answer i would like to add/edit some of his statements to android databinding.

1.Remove boilerplate code - As written in danypatas answer it removes some code and adds some code somewhere else like in layouts. That doesnt mean that the boilercode isnt reduced because usually it is reduced.

For example you may want to create a bindingadapter, which handles several custom arrayadapters for your spinner/recyclerview/listview/.. but requires only one simple adapter. You may want to use the adapter in your layout by using e.g.

app:myCoolAdaptersData="@{model.mydata}"

Now you can create your generic adapter and (re)use your bindingadapter in all your layouts instead of using for example:

ListView lv = findViewById(...);
CoolGenericAdapter<MyModel> coolAdapter = new CoolGenericAdapter<>(...);
lv.setAdapter(coolAdapter);

This is just one simple example which recudes the code alot in larger projects. Another sample to recude code is, that you bind your model to your layout. Updating field-values of your model usually updates your model aswell (if its at least a BaseObservable/ObservableField).

That means that you dont need to find all your views, update your views, update your models, ...

2.Stronger readability - The extra time spent for learning databinding doesnt really matter. Since the layouts are not really different except that you wrap them into a layout tag and put your namespaces there, it doesnt really differs from "regular" layouts. Using bindingadapters and accessing the model in the layout may take some time, but usually you can start beginning with the basics which are easy and beautiful to use aswell. Learning new stuff always takes time, but you will easy overhaul the time when using databinding after a while.

3.Powerful - Yes, its very powerful. Its easier to reuse existing code, reuse existing bindingadapters and may lead to more generated code but thats not always true. For example you may create multiple adapters within several classes instead of creating one bindingadapter, it may be hard to "optimize" it later. Optimizing the Bindingadapter means that it gets updated everywhere. Optimizing may decrease the "lines of code" since the boilerplace is reduced anyway.

I agree to 4. and 5.

6. Hard to Debug Since AS 3.0+ outputs useful hints like syntax issues in your layout (line number and file) its easy to debug databinding generated code. If you have problems finding the issue you may also want to check for errors in the generated code. Some librarys like dagger 2 or android architecture library may confuse you because the error lines doesnt match with the real "error". This is due generated code by other annotation processors. If you know that those annotation processors may get in trouble with databindings error outputs, you can easy fix that.

7. Unit Testing Its possible like if you dont use databinding by using executePendingBindings.

8. Readability Readability may be better without databinding. Since you put some business logic into your layout, some into your real code, it may lead to spaghetti-code. Another problem is that using lambdas in your layout may be very confused if the "layout-designer" doesnt know which param may be used.

Another very big problem is that bindingadapter can be everywhere. Using BindingAdapter annotation generates the code. That means that using this in your layout may lead to problems to find the proper code. If you want to update a bindingadapter you need to "find" it.

When should you use what? For larger projects it is a really good idea to use databinding together with the mvvm or mvp pattern. This is a really clean solution and very easy to extend. If you just want to create a small simple application you'r fine using MVC Pattern without databinding. If you have existing generic bindingadapters which can be used from other projects you may want to use databinding, because its easy to reuse this code.

Solution 3:

I am working on a huge Android project and the team has decided to phase out Data Binding library. Why? The primary reason is that it is exacerbating build time(10+ mins), by generating a lot of classes in the build process.