I'm new to android studio and I'm leaning it from this video
At 50:45 he says that we can directly use the id without findViewById (), for him it shows just import that Id, but when I tried the same I'm not getting what he is getting. Can anyone tell me what's wrong, is that feature removed in the latest update??
"kotlinx.android.synthetic is no longer a recommended practice. Removing in favour of explicit findViewById"
So, this feature`s been deprecated almost a year ago.
The new recommended way of working with view tree is View Binding.
Or you could write some lazy extension function that uses findViewById under the hood.
You can use the Kotlin Android Extensions check here or with the help of data binding or view binding you can just use the id directly in to your java activity class
The way you're talking about is Kotline Extensions for view, for which you apply it in the build.gradle file using apply plugin: 'kotlin-android-extensions', sync the project as prompted by the Android studio and it starts working.
But, Kotlin extensions has also been deprecated for view binding which is null-safe, also easy to implement and better.
To read about view binding, read the Android documentation on ViewBinding here and about migrating here. You can also go with this article to help with setting up Android view binding.
I am following a tutorial exactly. I gave the view a name in the layout XML file under android:id. When I type that name in Kotlin, it is highlighted in red and there is an "unresolved reference" error.
For example, in XML activity_main.xml:
<TextView
android:id="#+id/nameTextView"
android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"/>
In Kotlin MainActivity.kt:
override fun onCreate(savedInstanceState: Bundle?) {
super.onCreate(savedInstanceState)
setContentView(R.layout.activity_main)
nameTextView // <-- This is highlighted red with error so I can't use it!
}
I created this question because I've seen variations of it several times since the deprecation of Kotlin Android Extensions, but they are all phrased in various ways and are not very searchable. I think the common factor is a new Android programmer following a tutorial that was written before the deprecation. These tutorials generally don't specify that the feature being used is called synthetic properties or Kotlin Android Extensions, synthetic view properties, or kotlin-android-extensions, and that the feature is deprecated.
The ability to refer to a view directly by it's ID/name in Kotlin is called "synthetic properties" and it is a feature of a project plugin called Kotlin Android Extensions.
Google and JetBrains decided to deprecate Kotlin Android Extensions, meaning they no longer support it, and discourage you from using it. Ever since it was deprecated, when you create a new project in Android Studio, the plugin is no longer included in the new project. Therefore, synthetic properties are not supported in new projects and you will get an "unresolved reference" error if you try to use it.
Tutorials written between 2017 and 2020 often make use of this feature, and if they haven't been updated, they probably don't even mention it by name, because it was taken for granted to be an included plugin in new projects.
Google explained the reasons for deprecating it in this blog post, with these key reasons:
They pollute the global namespace
They don’t expose nullability information
They only work in Kotlin code
The quick and easy way to get your view reference is to use findViewById. The type of View should go inside the brackets <>. In an Activity, it looks like this:
override fun onCreate(savedInstanceState: Bundle?) {
super.onCreate(savedInstanceState)
setContentView(R.layout.activity_main)
val nameTextView = findViewById<TextView>(R.id.nameTextView)
// Now you can refer to the view using the variable
nameTextView.setText(R.string.hello_world)
}
In a Fragment, you would probably be working with the view in the onViewCreated function, so you must call findViewById on the parent view. (If you need to access it elsewhere in the Fragment, use requireView() instead of view.
override fun onViewCreated(view: View, savedInstanceState: Bundle?) {
super.onViewCreated(view, savedInstanceState)
val nameTextView = view.findViewById<TextView>(R.id.nameTextView)
//...
}
findViewById is probably the best option for now if you just want to complete your tutorial that was written before Kotlin Android Extensions was deprecated.
However, using findViewById can be tedious, and it is also error prone, because it won't warn you if you are searching for a view that isn't in the current layout. If you do, it will crash at runtime. For this reason, Google recommends using View Binding. There are a few steps to get started with view binding, but once you set it up, it is a cleaner option than findViewById. The official instructions are here.
Finally, if you really don't care that Kotlin Android Extensions is deprecated and want to use it anyway, it currently still works OK, but you have to add the plugin to your new project to enable it. (Beware this will no longer work in Kotlin 1.8 and up.) To do that, open the build.gradle file for your app module. At the top in the plugins block, you can add a line for kotlin-android-extensions, like this:
plugins {
id 'com.android.application'
id 'kotlin-android'
id 'kotlin-android-extensions'
}
Then press the "Sync project with Gradle files" button in the toolbar to enable it.
You can't directly access the view ids.
But you can use:
Jetpack as Kotlin Android Extensions are deprecated. Source Kotlin Android Extensions Deprection
You can use view binding. View binding is a feature that allows you to more easily write code that interacts with views. Once view binding is enabled in a module, it generates a binding class for each XML layout file present in that module.
Source: View Binding
In kotlin to access an element in the layout you do not need to do:
val k = findViewById(R......)
The element should be automatically imported into the kotlin file that connected to the view F.E if you have a text element in your main activity, in kotlin you access it by using it's id directly in the file that inflates that view and the import should be added automatically like this.
import kotlinx.android.synthetic.main.activity_main.view.*
However in few recent projects I noticed that this does not happen automatically.
You are correct, the Kotlin synthetics have quite a lot of similarities to the View Binding feature. The main advantage view binding has is that it's a bit harder to use the wrong binding class (with synthetics, you could quite easily import the wrong synthetics class if you have views in multiple layouts with the same ID).
I believe it's deprecated for a number of reasons, namely the type safety issue and the fact that it doesn't work with Java.
I've wrote a short tutorial on view binding here.
After some digging I found that Kotlin Android Extensions is now deprecated. Here is the guide to use the new method.
https://developer.android.com/topic/libraries/view-binding
Another option is to add the plugin in the app.gradle file.
plugins {
...
id 'kotlin-android-extensions'
}
After doing this two questions comes to mind:
Why did they remove the imports?
isn't the method that they demonstrated just doing the exact same thing as in it's importing the whole view?
I am using Data Binding in my project, when using <layout> and <data> in my xml binding class is not generated.
For example i have activity_main.xml
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<layout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android">
<data> </data>
<RelativeLayout
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="match_parent">
</RelativeLayout>
</layout>
Now if i am writing ActivityMainBinding in my activity/fragment it shows error that class is not available. But after including <variable> in my xml file, it is able to generate ActivityMainBinding class.
Android Studio : 2.1.3
Classpath : com.android.tools.build:gradle:2.1.3
minSdkVersion 16
targetSdkVersion 24
buildToolsVersion 24.0.0
I did not get any satisfying answers. So here are the tips which are summary of my data binding knowledge.
Tips For Solving DataBinding Issues
Update
To get more accurate errors and suggestions, I strongly recommend to update Android Studio and Gradle plugin version to the latest. Because I am not facing many issues after AS 3.2 version.
See Latest Android Studio, and Latest Gradle Plugin.
Orignal Solution
After reading this answer, you will not get stuck in data binding auto generation issues for both Classes and Data Variables.
Check these points one by one. Any of these can make your work done. Point 3 to last are really important, so don't miss them.
1. Check if data-binding enabled
You should have data binding enabled in build.gradle. If not then add this and Sync.
android {
...
buildFeatures {
dataBinding true
}
}
2. Check layout is converted in binding layout
Now if you want data binding class to be generated then you should wrap xml layout with data binding (<layout tag). Something like this.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<layout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android">
<android.support.constraint.ConstraintLayout
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="match_parent">
</android.support.constraint.ConstraintLayout>
</layout>
Along with this check whether the binding variable names are correct as in the view model class
3. Auto-generated Binding class name?
Your data binding class should be generated after creating binding layout.
If your layout name is in snake case activity_main.xml then data binding class
will be generated in camel case like ActivityMainBinding.
4. Can't See Import Suggestion?
Sometimes when you type ActivityMai..., then it does not show suggestion, in that case import manually.
import <yourpackage>databinding.ActivityMainBinding;
5. Read Build Fail Logcat
Your binding class and new variables in layout will not be generated if your build fails. So first Make project by Ctrl + F9 (Build > Make project).
If a build fails then see what is an error, usually we have errors in layout fields. Error logs will point out the error line number with the issue.
Binding may fail cause some stupid error, like syntax error or missing import. In that case, you will get logcat full of errors of binding classes. But you should read complete logcat to find appropriate issue.
6. Close and open project from recent
I always do this because it takes much less time than Rebuild / Make project.
Close project from File > Close Project
Open again from recent
Note that I prefer Close and Open from Recent because it takes much less time than Rebuild / Restart IDE.
7. Rebuild Project
If still your class is not generated. (Some time when we paste layout file, then it happens). Then Rebuild Project from Build> Rebuild (Not Build or Make project). It will generate your data binding class. (Rebuild does Magic for me.)
8. Have latest Android Studio
After updating AS to Android Studio 3.2, I felt many bugs fix in data binding auto generation. So you should also have the latest AS.
#Solution for <variables
<data>
<variable
name="item"
type="com.package.Model"/>
</data>
Usually, when we put a variable in layout, it creates a getter and setter of it. And we can use binding.setItem(item); and binding.getItem();, but if you can't see those methods then read the below information.
1. Close and open project from recent
If you have created a data variable - <variable in your layout and it does not show up its setter and getter in data binding class, then Close and Open from Recent your project.
2. Clean project after changing the type
If you changed the type of some <variable in your layout and getter setter type is not changing then Clean project (Build> Clean Project)
Final words
Finally if still your binding class is not generated, then we have our most powerful weapon. - Restart Android Studio
First, try just restart, this always generates variables of my binding layout after restart.
If it does not work then Invalidate Cache & Restart.
This is all that i do to solve my data binding errors. If you get any further issues, you can comment here.
DataBinding class generated automatically.
if your xml name is activity_test then the Binding class will be ActivityTestBinding.
but,
dataBinding {
enabled = true
}
layout should have layout as root
<layout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android">
</layout>
I had the same issue. After reading over the android sdk docs, there is only the expected file name to be created but nothing about what to do if it does not happen. I noticed after some more research that after removing the namespace to the layout element like below (using your example), it worked for me.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<layout>
<data> </data>
<RelativeLayout
xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="match_parent">
</RelativeLayout>
</layout>
In my case, the Binding class was generated and in place ( but I thought it wasn't) ... but it does not automatically add import of said class to the activity/fragment import section... so... OPTION + ENTER :)
dataBinding {
enabled = true
}
To enable the new data binding compiler, add the following option to your gradle.properties file:
android.databinding.enableV2=true
Update:
To enable databinding please use,
android {
...
buildFeatures {
dataBinding true
}
}
Please follow this link:
https://developer.android.com/jetpack/androidx/releases/databinding
if you do base job, for enable databainding in your project, like use enable in gradle and use layout tag in xml, when you change xml code and did not generat new databinding class for those xml you can use a fast way for generation only data binding class in gradle->other->databindinggenbaseclassesDebug it fast more than bulid whole project. its generate only databinding class.
After having set up it properly (including xml namespace and wrapping everything into <layout>), the one which worked for me was doing Build -> Make project. Nor Clean Project or Rebuild Project did. I'm in Android Studio 2.3.1, using 26.0.2 build tools. There's no need for <data> tags.
My solution was to take as a suffix FragmentBinding in the class name.
A binding class is generated for each layout file. By default, the name of the class is based on the name of the layout file, converting it to Pascal case and adding the Binding suffix to it. The above layout filename is activity_main.xml so the corresponding generated class is ActivityMainBinding. This class holds all the bindings from the layout properties (for example, the user variable) to the layout's views and knows how to assign values for the binding expressions.
The nomenclature of the name of the activity or fragment class may vary in terms of prefixes. Because the suffix is always Binding.
After following the response of Khemraj and Invalidate Caches / Restart, you should rewrite ActivityBinding or FragmentBinding to get the IDE suggestions of the classes that were already generated and DO NOT hardcode the import.
In my case I was trying to import the name of the class backwards be FragmentCompetitionsBinding instead of CompetitionsFragmentBinding.
GL
Source
I had the same problem. I made a mistake while I refactored.
The autogen binding class has its name from the xml layout file.
fragment_name.xml -> FragmentNameBinding
Most of time it just need to rebuild. not build not make project . and it will be better if you first of all do invalid Caches and restart Android studio then clean and rebuild it .
Data binding classes are generated during the build so after you enable data binding in the Gradle build of the app and surround your xml with the layout tag you should rebuild your app. If that doesn't help, delete your build folder and do it again.
I do not know it will work for you or not. Just rename the layout XML file name. Like suppose your layout name is activity_main.xml just change rename it to anything like main.xml and again rename it to activity_main.xml. Then you can able to see the import option on ActivityMainBinding.
Hope it works for you.
Thanks to this answer here - it looks like the "layout namespace" needs to either be cleared out, or you need a new unique name.
Here are the options that worked for me:
Create a fresh name for the layout to make sure it can be generated. This solved my issue, where I had a layout that was first created, without data binding - let's call it fragment_abc.xml. When I tried to add data binding to it, it was not recognized - even after multiple clear cache & restart calls. However, soon as I made a copy of the layout fragment_abc2.xml, immediately I got the generated data-binding .java/.class object.
After seeing the above work, I tried to just remove the /build folder from the module, and rebuilt the project - this worked to get data binding for the original layout.
When you work with a multimodule Android application check your binding class path. Maybe you should use:
import com.yourcompany.app.android.modulename.databinding.FragmentABCtBinding
insted of:
import com.yourcompany.app.android.databinding.FragmentABCtBinding
In my case, I thought that generated class had to appear with my usual classes in src folder. In addition, I thought that the name of the generated class should be slightly different. It all was my mistake. The generated class can be found in build folder, build -> generated -> ... path. If there is no import of the generated class in your activity, add the import
import com.yourcompany.app.databinding.ActivityMainBinding;"
Delete layouts and undo, and make sure the generated binding classes are imported correctly after that.
Make sure data binding enabled
android {
...
dataBinding {
enabled = true
}
...
}
dan click the button (Sync project with Gradle)
If answer did not work for you, then my recommendation is simple but effective.
The idea is to determine which is the component that is generating the problem. To do this, comment on all the lines of your custom_fragment.xml and its uses in the CustomFragment.kt and leave something minimalist like the following.
<layout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
xmlns:app="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res-auto"
xmlns:tools="http://schemas.android.com/tools">
<androidx.constraintlayout.widget.ConstraintLayout
android:id="#+id/test"
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="match_parent"/>
</layout>
Then run the app and add component to component while you Apply Code Changes (Ctrl+Alt+F10) to the execution of the app until the app crashes, that is when you found the fault.
Data binding logs are sometimes not so descriptive and this is a generic strategy to find the faulty component.
GL
The only thing I can imagine if possible is if you don't have
dataBinding {
enabled true
}
in your gradle file. If not just add it to the gradle file.
i.e
android {
......
dataBinding {
enabled true
}
}
then sync your project. If it still fail, you may need to do Invalidate/Restart of your android studio
I had same problem. Everything you done correct. Thing is you need add variable inside data tag in xml. For that you should create a sample model class and add it as variable in data tag.
Until that you won't get to see generated ActivityMainBinding.
1.Add Below in app gradle
dataBinding {
enabled = true
}
2.In xml layout write below code
<layout
xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android">
<data></data>
</layout>if you don't get data binding class just rename the layout file name and you will get data binding class.
I had a similar issue where I had the layout wrapped and my data binding enabled in the gradle file. Main activity still couldn't intellisense or see my classes. What fixed it for me was adding the binding variable and importing the binding anyway. From there I just built the solution and then it seemed to know what the class was. From there I was able to import my camel case classes that were generated.
I got the issue and the problem was in the layout the field used was not a String, it was a Date.
Looks that all field got to be text to work, at least with the TexView component.
If you build with the command
./gradlew build --stacktrace
This show better the errors.
In case you get the following error in DataBindingUtil.setContentView
Unresolved reference: activity_main
all you need to do is remove the following import statement
import android.R
I found the solution on another forum. Source
If Recently any one migrated existing project into androidx then you need to replace your import from
import com.yourpackagename.BR;
to
import androidx.databinding.library.baseAdapters.BR;
After Google 2 days finally got solution, which one work for me.
There are cases when you won't see a file under generated directory, you might be binding a property that is not declared in viewmodel. It doesn't essentially give you a lint error if you do so in xml.
If you are implement the Serializable -> you must implement the Serializable
else you will get this error. Hope it will help someone in future
In my case I use the Parcel library. I missed to annotate #Parcel in my sub class
In addition to the above steps, you can also check the variable type. Make sure it's String for TextView or the same as defined in the BindingAdapter.
For example:
data class MyDataObject(val name: String, val age: Int)
and in XML:
android:text="#{dataobject.age}"
This will cause the above error. To fix you can either make the age variable of type String or you can import String in your XML and use String.valueOf(age) as following:
<data>
<import type="String" />
...
</data>
And in your TextView:
android:text="#{String.valueOf(dataobject.age)}"
In my case, data binding classes were not generated because I had deleted the mipmap Android Resource Directory. I recreated the res/mipmap/ directory and the data binding classes were reinstated.
I encountered a similar issue where DataBinding failed to generate the BindingImpl class.
In my case was an issue from a method in the data class where the name was used wrong:
The model contained a method onSignInCliked() and in the layout I used onSigninCliked(). Notice the SignIn vs Signin.
The error message wasn't enough and I discovered the issue only when I used the build script with the stack-trace option.
IDs for things like R.layout.simple_list_item_1 don't show up on autocompletion in Android Studio. Nor can they be resolved when the name is typed in manually. I'm trying to use an ArrayAdapter, and I had to manually create a simple_list_item_1.xml in my project layout directory, and paste in the contents from the Android repository on Github
Am I missing something, or is that what's supposed to be done? Most resources I go to seem to just reference the list item XML without doing anything else
to use android predefined layouts, colors etc. You should use
android.R.layout.simple_list_item_1
probably you try to reach your own resources. Check your imports and you should see your R file.
as #Orhan Obut explained, use
android.R.layout.simple_list_item_1.
Do NOT leave out the word android in the above statement. That is how you access android's predefined resources
It's two years later but never too late because I spent the day reading all posts about this and the answer on the Android Developer site was simple: make sure the google depository is installed for your project in the repositories section of its build.gradle:
maven {
url "https://maven.google.com"
}
Worked for me as soon as the project was synched after adding the .
I got the same error. The error was resolved when I imported android.R.layout and typed layout.simple_list_item_1 instead of R.layout.simple_list_item_1.