How to integrate Androidx Paging-3 in Clean Architecture?

Question

This blog on "Clean Architecture" describes how to build a modular Android application along with using Clean Architecture.

In that example project, the author places the business logic in a separate 'core' module and that module is framework independent. It contains repository classes, use-case classes, and data-source interfaces. All the other framework dependent components go in the 'app' module.

Android Paging library treats its PagingSource class as a repo level component. Even RoomDao classes have ability to directly return an instance of PagingSource. In this case, we used to return Flow<PagingData> from the repo methods. But now, we can't have PagingData in repo class.

So, how to integrate AndroidX "Paging-3" in an app built inline with "Clean Architecture"?

Answer 1

Androidx-paging is a usefull tool that is not compatible with the blog-article proposed architecture:

• Article: usecases are (or should be) platform independent.
• Androidx-paging is platform dependent.

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Paging is used by the presentation layer when (parts of) lists are displayed.

Affected layers:

• View Layer: (i.e. a RecyclingView to show the page)
• Usecase Layer: (i.e. show page 1 of 15) android-specific Androidx-paging
• Domain-Layer does not use entities but pagingdata
• Repository-Interface: (i.e. get item 1 - 15 of 220 items)