Making a responsive dashboard structure for JetLagged with Jetpack Compose

Posted by Rebecca Franks – Developer Relations Engineer

This weblog put up is a part of our sequence: Adaptive Highlight Week the place we offer assets—weblog posts, movies, pattern code, and extra—all designed that can assist you adapt your apps to telephones, foldables, tablets, ChromeOS and even vehicles. You possibly can learn extra within the overview of the Adaptive Highlight Week, which can be up to date all through the week.

We’ve heard the information, creating adaptive layouts in Jetpack Compose is simpler than ever. As a declarative UI toolkit, Jetpack Compose is properly suited to designing and implementing layouts that modify themselves to render content material in a different way throughout quite a lot of sizes. Through the use of logic coupled with Window Dimension Courses, Move layouts, movableContentOf and LookaheadScope, we will guarantee fluid responsive layouts in Jetpack Compose.

Following the discharge of the JetLagged pattern at Google I/O 2023, we determined so as to add extra examples to it. Particularly, we wished to reveal how Compose can be utilized to create a good looking dashboard-like structure. This text exhibits how we’ve achieved this.

Use FlowRow and FlowColumn to construct layouts that reply to totally different display screen sizes

Utilizing Move layouts ( FlowRow and FlowColumn ) make it a lot simpler to implement responsive, reflowing layouts that reply to display screen sizes and robotically circulation content material to a brand new line when the accessible house in a row or column is full.

Within the JetLagged instance, we use a FlowRow, with a maxItemsInEachRow set to three. This ensures we maximize the house accessible for the dashboard, and place every particular person card in a row or column the place house is used correctly, and on cell gadgets, we largely have 1 card per row, provided that the objects are smaller are there two seen per row.

Some playing cards leverage Modifiers that don’t specify a precise dimension, due to this fact permitting the playing cards to develop to fill the accessible width, for example utilizing Modifier.widthIn(max = 400.dp), or set a sure dimension, like Modifier.width(200.dp).

FlowRow(
    modifier = Modifier.fillMaxSize(),
    horizontalArrangement = Association.Middle,
    verticalArrangement = Association.Middle,
    maxItemsInEachRow = 3
) {
    Field(modifier = Modifier.widthIn(max = 400.dp))
    Field(modifier = Modifier.width(200.dp))
    Field(modifier = Modifier.dimension(200.dp))
    // and many others 
}

We might additionally leverage the load modifier to divide up the remaining space of a row or column, take a look at the documentation on merchandise weights for extra data.

Use WindowSizeClasses to distinguish between gadgets

WindowSizeClasses are helpful for build up breakpoints in our UI for when components ought to show in a different way. In JetLagged, we use the lessons to know whether or not we must always embody playing cards in Columns or maintain them flowing one after the opposite.

For instance, if WindowWidthSizeClass.COMPACT, we maintain objects in the identical FlowRow, the place as if the structure it bigger than compact, they’re positioned in a FlowColumn, nested inside a FlowRow:

            FlowRow(
                modifier = Modifier.fillMaxSize(),
                horizontalArrangement = Association.Middle,
                verticalArrangement = Association.Middle,
                maxItemsInEachRow = 3
            ) {
                JetLaggedSleepGraphCard(uiState.worth.sleepGraphData)
                if (windowSizeClass == WindowWidthSizeClass.COMPACT) {
                    AverageTimeInBedCard()
                    AverageTimeAsleepCard()
                } else {
                    FlowColumn {
                        AverageTimeInBedCard()
                        AverageTimeAsleepCard()
                    }
                }
                if (windowSizeClass == WindowWidthSizeClass.COMPACT) {
                    WellnessCard(uiState.worth.wellnessData)
                    HeartRateCard(uiState.worth.heartRateData)
                } else {
                    FlowColumn {
                        WellnessCard(uiState.worth.wellnessData)
                        HeartRateCard(uiState.worth.heartRateData)
                    }
                }
            }

From the above logic, the UI will seem within the following methods on totally different system sizes:

Use movableContentOf to keep up bits of UI state throughout display screen resizes

Movable content material permits you to save the contents of a Composable to maneuver it round your structure hierarchy with out dropping state. It ought to be used for content material that’s perceived to be the identical – simply in a special location on display screen.

Think about this, you’re shifting home to a special metropolis, and also you pack a field with a clock inside it. Opening the field within the new dwelling, you’d see that the time would nonetheless be ticking from the place it left off. It may not be the proper time of your new timezone, however it’s going to positively have ticked on from the place you left it. The contents contained in the field don’t reset their inside state when the field is moved round.

What in case you might use the identical idea in Compose to maneuver objects on display screen with out dropping their inside state?

Take the next situation into consideration: Outline totally different Tile composables that show an infinitely animating worth between 0 and 100 over 5000ms.

@Composable
enjoyable Tile1() {
    val repeatingAnimation = rememberInfiniteTransition()

    val float = repeatingAnimation.animateFloat(
        initialValue = 0f,
        targetValue = 100f,
        animationSpec = infiniteRepeatable(repeatMode = RepeatMode.Reverse,
            animation = tween(5000))
    )
    Field(modifier = Modifier
        .dimension(100.dp)
        .background(purple, RoundedCornerShape(8.dp))){
        Textual content("Tile 1 ${float.worth.roundToInt()}",
            modifier = Modifier.align(Alignment.Middle))
    }
}

We then show them on display screen utilizing a Column Format – exhibiting the infinite animations as they go:

However what If we wished to put the tiles in a different way, based mostly on if the cellphone is in a special orientation (or totally different display screen dimension), and we don’t need the animation values to cease working? One thing like the next:

@Composable
enjoyable WithoutMovableContentDemo() {
    val mode = keep in mind {
        mutableStateOf(Mode.Portrait)
    }
    if (mode.worth == Mode.Panorama) {
        Row {
           Tile1()
           Tile2()
        }
    } else {
        Column {
           Tile1()
           Tile2()
        }
    }
}

This seems fairly commonplace, however working this on system – we will see that switching between the 2 layouts causes our animations to restart.

That is the right case for movable content material – it’s the similar Composables on display screen, they’re simply in a special location. So how will we use it? We are able to simply outline our tiles in a movableContentOf block, utilizing keep in mind to make sure its saved throughout compositions:

val tiles = keep in mind {
        movableContentOf {
            Tile1()
            Tile2()
        }
 }

Now as a substitute of calling our composables once more contained in the Column and Row respectively, we name tiles() as a substitute.

@Composable
enjoyable MovableContentDemo() {
    val mode = keep in mind {
        mutableStateOf(Mode.Portrait)
    }
    val tiles = keep in mind {
        movableContentOf {
            Tile1()
            Tile2()
        }
    }
    Field(modifier = Modifier.fillMaxSize()) {
        if (mode.worth == Mode.Panorama) {
            Row {
                tiles()
            }
        } else {
            Column {
                tiles()
            }
        }

        Button(onClick = {
            if (mode.worth == Mode.Portrait) {
                mode.worth = Mode.Panorama
            } else {
                mode.worth = Mode.Portrait
            }
        }, modifier = Modifier.align(Alignment.BottomCenter)) {
            Textual content("Change structure")
        }
    }
}

It will then keep in mind the nodes generated by these Composables and protect the interior state that these composables at present have.

We are able to now see that our animation state is remembered throughout the totally different compositions. Our clock within the field will now maintain state when it is moved all over the world.

Utilizing this idea, we will maintain the animating bubble state of our playing cards, by inserting the playing cards in movableContentOf:

Language
val timeSleepSummaryCards = keep in mind {
            movableContentOf {
                AverageTimeInBedCard()
                AverageTimeAsleepCard()
            }
        }
        LookaheadScope {
            FlowRow(
                modifier = Modifier.fillMaxSize(),
                horizontalArrangement = Association.Middle,
                verticalArrangement = Association.Middle,
                maxItemsInEachRow = 3
            ) {
                //..
                if (windowSizeClass == WindowWidthSizeClass.Compact) {
                    timeSleepSummaryCards()
                } else {
                    FlowColumn {
                        timeSleepSummaryCards()
                    }
                }
                //
            }
        }

This enables the playing cards state to be remembered and the playing cards will not be recomposed. That is evident when observing the bubbles within the background of the playing cards, on resizing the display screen the bubble animation continues with out restarting the animation.

Use Modifier.animateBounds() to have fluid animations between totally different window sizes

From the above instance, we will see that state is maintained between modifications in structure dimension (or structure itself), however the distinction between the 2 layouts is a bit jarring. We’d like this to animate between the 2 states with out difficulty.

Within the newest compose-bom-alpha (2024.09.03), there’s a new experimental customized Modifier, Modifier.animateBounds(). The animateBounds modifier requires a LookaheadScope.

LookaheadScope permits Compose to carry out intermediate measurement passes of structure modifications, notifying composables of the intermediate states between them. LookaheadScope can also be used for the brand new shared factor APIs, that you could have seen not too long ago.

To make use of Modifier.animateBounds(), we wrap the top-level FlowRow in a LookaheadScope, after which apply the animateBounds modifier to every card. We are able to additionally customise how the animation runs, by specifying the boundsTransform parameter to a customized spring spec:

val boundsTransform = { _ : Rect, _: Rect ->
   spring(
       dampingRatio = Spring.DampingRatioNoBouncy,
       stiffness = Spring.StiffnessMedium,
       visibilityThreshold = Rect.VisibilityThreshold
   )
}


LookaheadScope {
   val animateBoundsModifier = Modifier.animateBounds(
       lookaheadScope = this@LookaheadScope,
       boundsTransform = boundsTransform)
   val timeSleepSummaryCards = keep in mind {
       movableContentOf {
           AverageTimeInBedCard(animateBoundsModifier)
           AverageTimeAsleepCard(animateBoundsModifier)
       }
   }
   FlowRow(
       modifier = Modifier
           .fillMaxSize()
           .windowInsetsPadding(insets),
       horizontalArrangement = Association.Middle,
       verticalArrangement = Association.Middle,
       maxItemsInEachRow = 3
   ) {
       JetLaggedSleepGraphCard(uiState.worth.sleepGraphData, animateBoundsModifier.widthIn(max = 600.dp))
       if (windowSizeClass == WindowWidthSizeClass.Compact) {
           timeSleepSummaryCards()
       } else {
           FlowColumn {
               timeSleepSummaryCards()
           }
       }


       FlowColumn {
           WellnessCard(
               wellnessData = uiState.worth.wellnessData,
               modifier = animateBoundsModifier
                   .widthIn(max = 400.dp)
                   .heightIn(min = 200.dp)
           )
           HeartRateCard(
               modifier = animateBoundsModifier
                   .widthIn(max = 400.dp, min = 200.dp),
               uiState.worth.heartRateData
           )
       }
   }
}

Making use of this to our structure, we will see the transition between the 2 states is extra seamless with out jarring interruptions.

Making use of this logic to our entire dashboard, when resizing our structure, you will note that we now have a fluid UI interplay all through the entire display screen.

Abstract

As you’ll be able to see from this text, utilizing Compose has enabled us to construct a responsive dashboard-like structure by leveraging circulation layouts, WindowSizeClasses, movable content material and LookaheadScope. These ideas can be used to your personal layouts which will have objects shifting round in them too.

For extra data on these totally different matters, remember to take a look at the official documentation, for the detailed modifications to JetLagged, check out this pull request.