Better Android Apps Using MVVM With Clean Architecture

If you don’t choose the right architecture for your Android project, you will have a hard time maintaining it as your codebase grows and your team expands.

This isn’t just an Android MVVM tutorial. In this article, we are going to combine MVVM (Model-View-ViewModel or sometimes stylized “the ViewModel pattern”) with Clean Architecture. We are going to see how this architecture can be used to write decoupled, testable, and maintainable code.

Why MVVM with Clean Architecture?

MVVM separates your view (i.e. Activitys and Fragments) from your business logic. MVVM is enough for small projects, but when your codebase becomes huge, your ViewModels start bloating. Separating responsibilities becomes hard.

MVVM with Clean Architecture is pretty good in such cases. It goes one step further in separating the responsibilities of your code base. It clearly abstracts the logic of the actions that can be performed in your app.

Note: You can combine Clean Architecture with the model-view-presenter (MVP) architecture as well. But since Android Architecture Components already provides a built-in ViewModel class, we are going with MVVM over MVP—no MVVM framework required!

Advantages of Using Clean Architecture

• Your code is even more easily testable than with plain MVVM.
• Your code is further decoupled (the biggest advantage.)
• The package structure is even easier to navigate.
• The project is even easier to maintain.
• Your team can add new features even more quickly.

Disadvantages of Clean Architecture

• It has a slightly steep learning curve. How all the layers work together may take some time to understand, especially if you are coming from patterns like simple MVVM or MVP.
• It adds a lot of extra classes, so it’s not ideal for low-complexity projects.

Our data flow will look like this:

Our business logic is completely decoupled from our UI. It makes our code very easy to maintain and test.

The example we are going to see is quite simple. It allows users to create new posts and see a list of posts created by them. I’m not using any third-party library (like Dagger, RxJava, etc.) in this example for the sake of simplicity.

The Layers of MVVM with Clean Architecture

The code is divided into three separate layers:

1. Presentation Layer
2. Domain Layer
3. Data Layer

We’ll get into more detail about each layer below. For now, our resulting package structure looks like this:

Even within the Android app architecture we’re using, there are many ways to structure your file/folder hierarchy. I like to group project files based on features. I find it neat and concise. You are free to choose whatever project structure suits you.

The Presentation Layer

This includes our Activitys, Fragments, and ViewModels. An Activity should be as dumb as possible. Never put your business logic in Activitys.

An Activity will talk to a ViewModel and a ViewModel will talk to the domain layer to perform actions. A ViewModel never talks to the data layer directly.

Here we are passing a UseCaseHandler and two UseCases to our ViewModel. We’ll get into that in more detail soon, but in this architecture, a UseCase is an action that defines how a ViewModel interacts with the data layer.

Here’s how our Kotlin code looks:

class PostListViewModel(
        val useCaseHandler: UseCaseHandler,
        val getPosts: GetPosts,
        val savePost: SavePost): ViewModel() {


    fun getAllPosts(userId: Int, callback: PostDataSource.LoadPostsCallback) {
        val requestValue = GetPosts.RequestValues(userId)
        useCaseHandler.execute(getPosts, requestValue, object :
        UseCase.UseCaseCallback<GetPosts.ResponseValue> {
            override fun onSuccess(response: GetPosts.ResponseValue) {
                callback.onPostsLoaded(response.posts)
            }

            override fun onError(t: Throwable) {
                callback.onError(t)
            }
        })
    }

    fun savePost(post: Post, callback: PostDataSource.SaveTaskCallback) {
        val requestValues = SavePost.RequestValues(post)
        useCaseHandler.execute(savePost, requestValues, object :
        UseCase.UseCaseCallback<SavePost.ResponseValue> {
            override fun onSuccess(response: SavePost.ResponseValue) {
                callback.onSaveSuccess()
            }
            override fun onError(t: Throwable) {
                callback.onError(t)
            }
        })
    }

}

The Domain Layer

The domain layer contains all the use cases of your application. In this example, we have UseCase, an abstract class. All our UseCases will extend this class.

abstract class UseCase<Q : UseCase.RequestValues, P : UseCase.ResponseValue> {

    var requestValues: Q? = null

    var useCaseCallback: UseCaseCallback<P>? = null

    internal fun run() {
        executeUseCase(requestValues)
    }

    protected abstract fun executeUseCase(requestValues: Q?)

    /**
     * Data passed to a request.
     */
    interface RequestValues

    /**
     * Data received from a request.
     */
    interface ResponseValue

    interface UseCaseCallback<R> {
        fun onSuccess(response: R)
        fun onError(t: Throwable)
    }
}

And UseCaseHandler handles execution of a UseCase. We should never block the UI when we fetch data from the database or our remote server. This is the place where we decide to execute our UseCase on a background thread and receive the response on the main thread.

class UseCaseHandler(private val mUseCaseScheduler: UseCaseScheduler) {

    fun <T : UseCase.RequestValues, R : UseCase.ResponseValue> execute(
            useCase: UseCase<T, R>, values: T, callback: UseCase.UseCaseCallback<R>) {
        useCase.requestValues = values
        useCase.useCaseCallback = UiCallbackWrapper(callback, this)

        mUseCaseScheduler.execute(Runnable {
            useCase.run()
        })
    }

    private fun <V : UseCase.ResponseValue> notifyResponse(response: V,
                                                   useCaseCallback: UseCase.UseCaseCallback<V>) {
        mUseCaseScheduler.notifyResponse(response, useCaseCallback)
    }

    private fun <V : UseCase.ResponseValue> notifyError(
            useCaseCallback: UseCase.UseCaseCallback<V>, t: Throwable) {
        mUseCaseScheduler.onError(useCaseCallback, t)
    }

    private class UiCallbackWrapper<V : UseCase.ResponseValue>(
    private val mCallback: UseCase.UseCaseCallback<V>,
    private val mUseCaseHandler: UseCaseHandler) : UseCase.UseCaseCallback<V> {

        override fun onSuccess(response: V) {
            mUseCaseHandler.notifyResponse(response, mCallback)
        }

        override fun onError(t: Throwable) {
            mUseCaseHandler.notifyError(mCallback, t)
        }
    }

    companion object {

        private var INSTANCE: UseCaseHandler? = null
        fun getInstance(): UseCaseHandler {
            if (INSTANCE == null) {
                INSTANCE = UseCaseHandler(UseCaseThreadPoolScheduler())
            }
            return INSTANCE!!
        }
    }
}

As its name implies, the GetPosts UseCase is responsible for getting all posts of a user.

class GetPosts(private val mDataSource: PostDataSource) :
UseCase<GetPosts.RequestValues, GetPosts.ResponseValue>() {

    protected override fun executeUseCase(requestValues: GetPosts.RequestValues?) {
        mDataSource.getPosts(requestValues?.userId ?: -1, object :
        PostDataSource.LoadPostsCallback {
            override fun onPostsLoaded(posts: List<Post>) {
                val responseValue = ResponseValue(posts)
                useCaseCallback?.onSuccess(responseValue)
            }
            override fun onError(t: Throwable) {
                // Never use generic exceptions. Create proper exceptions. Since
                // our use case is different we will go with generic throwable
                useCaseCallback?.onError(Throwable("Data not found"))
            }
        })
    }
    class RequestValues(val userId: Int) : UseCase.RequestValues
    class ResponseValue(val posts: List<Post>) : UseCase.ResponseValue
}

The purpose of the UseCases is to be a mediator between your ViewModels and Repositorys.

Let’s say in the future you decide to add an “edit post” feature. All you have to do is add a new EditPost UseCase and all its code will be completely separate and decoupled from other UseCases. We’ve all seen it many times: New features are introduced and they inadvertently break something in preexisting code. Creating a separate UseCase helps immensely in avoiding that.

Of course, you can’t eliminate that possibility 100 percent, but you sure can minimize it. This is what separates Clean Architecture from other patterns: The code is so decoupled that you can treat every layer as a black box.

The Data Layer

This has all the repositories which the domain layer can use. This layer exposes a data source API to outside classes:

interface PostDataSource {

    interface LoadPostsCallback {
        fun onPostsLoaded(posts: List<Post>)
        fun onError(t: Throwable)
    }

    interface SaveTaskCallback {
        fun onSaveSuccess()
        fun onError(t: Throwable)
    }

    fun getPosts(userId: Int, callback: LoadPostsCallback)
    fun savePost(post: Post)
}

PostDataRepository implements PostDataSource. It decides whether we fetch data from a local database or a remote server.

class PostDataRepository private constructor(
        private val localDataSource: PostDataSource,
        private val remoteDataSource: PostDataSource): PostDataSource {

    companion object {
        private var INSTANCE: PostDataRepository? = null
        fun getInstance(localDataSource: PostDataSource,
        remoteDataSource: PostDataSource): PostDataRepository {
            if (INSTANCE == null) {
                INSTANCE = PostDataRepository(localDataSource, remoteDataSource)
            }
            return INSTANCE!!
        }
    }
    var isCacheDirty = false
    override fun getPosts(userId: Int, callback: PostDataSource.LoadPostsCallback) {
        if (isCacheDirty) {
            getPostsFromServer(userId, callback)
        } else {
            localDataSource.getPosts(userId, object : PostDataSource.LoadPostsCallback {
                override fun onPostsLoaded(posts: List<Post>) {
                    refreshCache()
                    callback.onPostsLoaded(posts)
                }
                override fun onError(t: Throwable) {
                    getPostsFromServer(userId, callback)
                }
            })
        }
    }
    override fun savePost(post: Post) {
        localDataSource.savePost(post)
        remoteDataSource.savePost(post)
    }
    private fun getPostsFromServer(userId: Int, callback: PostDataSource.LoadPostsCallback) {
        remoteDataSource.getPosts(userId, object : PostDataSource.LoadPostsCallback {
            override fun onPostsLoaded(posts: List<Post>) {
                refreshCache()
                refreshLocalDataSource(posts)
                callback.onPostsLoaded(posts)
            }
            override fun onError(t: Throwable) {
                callback.onError(t)
            }
        })
    }
    private fun refreshLocalDataSource(posts: List<Post>) {
        posts.forEach {
            localDataSource.savePost(it)
        }
    }
    private fun refreshCache() {
        isCacheDirty = false
    }
}

The code is mostly self-explanatory. This class has two variables, localDataSource and remoteDataSource. Their type is PostDataSource, so we don’t care how they are actually implemented under the hood.

In my personal experience, this architecture has proved to be invaluable. In one of my apps, I started with Firebase on the back end which is great for quickly building your app. I knew eventually I’d have to shift to my own server.

When I did, all I had to do was change the implementation in RemoteDataSource. I didn’t have to touch any other class even after such a huge change. That is the advantage of decoupled code. Changing any given class shouldn’t affect other parts of your code.

Some of the extra classes we have are:

interface UseCaseScheduler {

    fun execute(runnable: Runnable)

    fun <V : UseCase.ResponseValue> notifyResponse(response: V,
                                                   useCaseCallback: UseCase.UseCaseCallback<V>)

    fun <V : UseCase.ResponseValue> onError(
            useCaseCallback: UseCase.UseCaseCallback<V>, t: Throwable)
}


class UseCaseThreadPoolScheduler : UseCaseScheduler {

    val POOL_SIZE = 2

    val MAX_POOL_SIZE = 4

    val TIMEOUT = 30

    private val mHandler = Handler()

    internal var mThreadPoolExecutor: ThreadPoolExecutor

    init {
        mThreadPoolExecutor = ThreadPoolExecutor(POOL_SIZE, MAX_POOL_SIZE, TIMEOUT.toLong(),
                TimeUnit.SECONDS, ArrayBlockingQueue(POOL_SIZE))
    }

    override fun execute(runnable: Runnable) {
        mThreadPoolExecutor.execute(runnable)
    }

    override fun <V : UseCase.ResponseValue> notifyResponse(response: V,
                                                   useCaseCallback: UseCase.UseCaseCallback<V>) {
        mHandler.post { useCaseCallback.onSuccess(response) }
    }

    override fun <V : UseCase.ResponseValue> onError(
            useCaseCallback: UseCase.UseCaseCallback<V>, t: Throwable) {
        mHandler.post { useCaseCallback.onError(t) }
    }

}

UseCaseThreadPoolScheduler is responsible for executing tasks asynchronously using ThreadPoolExecuter.

class ViewModelFactory : ViewModelProvider.Factory {


    override fun <T : ViewModel> create(modelClass: Class<T>): T {
        if (modelClass == PostListViewModel::class.java) {
            return PostListViewModel(
                    Injection.provideUseCaseHandler()
                    , Injection.provideGetPosts(), Injection.provideSavePost()) as T
        }
        throw IllegalArgumentException("unknown model class $modelClass")
    }

    companion object {
        private var INSTANCE: ViewModelFactory? = null
        fun getInstance(): ViewModelFactory {
            if (INSTANCE == null) {
                INSTANCE = ViewModelFactory()
            }
            return INSTANCE!!
        }
    }
}

This is our ViewModelFactory. You have to create this to pass arguments in your ViewModel constructor.

Dependency Injection

I’ll explain dependency injection with an example. If you look at our PostDataRepository class, it has two dependencies, LocalDataSource and RemoteDataSource. We use the Injection class to provide these dependencies to the PostDataRepository class.

Injecting dependency has two main advantages. One is that you get to control the instantiation of objects from a central place instead of spreading it across the whole codebase. Another is that this will help us write unit tests for PostDataRepository because now we can just pass mocked versions of LocalDataSource and RemoteDataSource to the PostDataRepository constructor instead of actual values.

object Injection {

    fun providePostDataRepository(): PostDataRepository {
        return PostDataRepository.getInstance(provideLocalDataSource(), provideRemoteDataSource())
    }

    fun provideViewModelFactory() = ViewModelFactory.getInstance()

    fun provideLocalDataSource(): PostDataSource = LocalDataSource.getInstance()

    fun provideRemoteDataSource(): PostDataSource = RemoteDataSource.getInstance()

    fun provideGetPosts() = GetPosts(providePostDataRepository())

    fun provideSavePost() = SavePost(providePostDataRepository())

    fun provideUseCaseHandler() = UseCaseHandler.getInstance()
}

Note: I prefer using Dagger 2 for dependency injection in complex projects. But with its extremely steep learning curve, it’s beyond the scope of this article. So if you’re interested in going deeper, I highly recommend Hari Vignesh Jayapalan’s introduction to Dagger 2.

MVVM with Clean Architecture: A Solid Combination

Our purpose with this project was to understand MVVM with Clean Architecture, so we skipped over a few things that you can try to improve it further:

1. Use LiveData or RxJava to remove callbacks and make it a little neater.
2. Use states to represent your UI. (For that, check out this amazing talk by Jake Wharton.)
3. Use Dagger 2 to inject dependencies.

This is one of the best and most scalable architectures for Android apps. I hope you enjoyed this article, and I look forward to hearing how you’ve used this approach in your own apps!