Xtendroid

Xtendroid is an Android library that combines the power of Xtend with some utility classes and annotations for productive Android development. Xtendroid helps to reduce/eliminate boilerplate code that Android is known for, while providing full IDE support. This is achieved by using Xtend's extension methods and active annotations (edit-time code generators), which expand out to Java code during editing/compilation.

Xtendroid can replace dependency injection frameworks like RoboGuice, Dagger, and Android Annotations, with lazy-loading getters that are automatically generated for widgets in your layouts. With Xtend's lambda support and functional-style programming constructs, it reduces/eliminates the need for libraries like RetroLambda and RxJava. With it's database support, Xtendroid also removes the need for ORM libraries.

Anonymous inner classes

Android code:

// get button widget, set onclick handler to toast a message
Button myButton = (Button) findViewById(R.id.my_button);

myButton.setOnClickListener(new View.OnClickListener() {
   public void onClick(View v) {
      Toast.makeText(this, "Hello, world!", Toast.LENGTH_LONG).show();
   }
});

Xtendroid Code:

// myButton references pre-generated getMyButton() lazy-getter
myButton.onClickListener = [
   toast("Hello, world!")
]

Redundant Type Information

Android code:

// Store JSONObject results into an array of HashMaps
ArrayList<HashMap<String,JSONObject>> results = new ArrayList<HashMap<String,JSONObject>>();

HashMap<String,JsonObject> result1 = new HashMap<String,JSONObject>();
result1.put("query", new JSONObject());

results.put(result1);

Xtendroid (Xtend) code:

var results = #[
    #{ "query" -> new JSONObject }
]

Lambdas and multi-threading

Blink a button 3 times (equivalent Java code is too verbose to include here):

// Blink button 3 times using AsyncTask
new BgTask().runInBg [
    for (i : 1..3) { // number ranges, nice!
        runOnUiThread [ myButton.pressed = true ]
        Thread.sleep(250) // look ma! no try/catch!
        runOnUiThread [ myButton.pressed = false ]
        Thread.sleep(250)
    }
]

Documentation

Xtendroid removes boilerplate code from things like activities and fragments, background processing, shared preferences, adapters (and ViewHolder pattern), database handling, JSON handling, Parcelables, Bundle arguments, and more. Combining these, you get concise and expressive code.

View the full reference documentation for Xtendroid here.

Sample

Here's an example of an app that fetches a quote from the internet and displays it. First, the standard Android activity layout:

res/layout/activity_main.xml

<LinearLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    xmlns:tools="http://schemas.android.com/tools"
    android:layout_width="match_parent"
    android:layout_height="match_parent"
    tools:context=".MainActivity"
    android:orientation="vertical">

    <TextView
        android:id="@+id/main_quote"
        android:layout_width="match_parent"
        android:layout_height="0dp"
        android:layout_weight="1"
        android:gravity="center"
        android:text="Click below to load a quote..."/>

    <Button
        android:id="@+id/main_load_quote"
        android:layout_width="fill_parent"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"
        android:text="Load Quote"/>

</LinearLayout>

Now the activity class to fetch the quote from the internet (in a background thread), handle any errors, and display the result. Only imports and package declaration have been omitted.

MainActivity.xtend

@AndroidActivity(R.layout.activity_main) class MainActivity {

   @OnCreate   // Run this method when widgets are ready
   def init() {
      // set up the button to load quotes
      mainLoadQuote.onClickListener = [
         // show progress
         val pd = new ProgressDialog(this)
         pd.message = "Loading quote..."

         // load quote in the background
         new BgTask().runInBgWithProgress(pd,[
            // get the data in the background
            getData('http://www.iheartquotes.com/api/v1/random')
         ],[result|
            // update the UI with new data
            mainQuote.text = Html.fromHtml(result)
         ],[error|
            // handle any errors by toasting it
            toast("Error: " + error.message)
         ])
      ]
   }

   /**
    * Utility function to get data from the internet. In production code,
    * you should rather use something like the Volley library.
    */
   def static String getData(String url) {
      // connect to the URL
      var c = new URL(url).openConnection as HttpURLConnection
      c.connect

      if (c.responseCode == HttpURLConnection.HTTP_OK) {
         // read data into a buffer
         var os = new ByteArrayOutputStream
         ByteStreams.copy(c.inputStream, os) // Guava utility
         return os.toString
      }

      throw new Exception("[" + c.responseCode + "] " + c.responseMessage)
   }
}

Declare the activity in your AndroidManifest.xml file, add the internet permission, and that's it! Note the lack of boilerplate code and Java verbosity in things like exception handling and implementing anonymous inner classes for handlers.

This and other examples are in the examples folder. The Xtendroid Test app is like Android's API Demos app, and showcases the various features of Xtendroid.

For an example of a live project that uses this library, see the Webapps project: https://github.com/tobykurien/webapps

How it works

If you display toasts often, you know that typing out Toast.makeText(msg, Toast.LENGTH_SHORT).show(); is a pain, and it's not easy to add it to a base class, since Activities (and Fragments) may extend multiple base classes (like ListActivity, FragmentActivity, etc.). Here's the easy way using Xtendroid:

import static extension org.xtendroid.utils.AlertUtils.*  // mix-in our alert utils

// elsewhere
toast("My short message")
toastLong("This message displays for longer")

Where is the reference to the Context object? It is implicit, thanks to Xtend:

// this:
AlertUtils.toast(context, "My message")

// becomes this via the static import:
toast(context, "My message")

// which is equivalent to (extension method):
context.toast("My message")

// which, in an Activity is the same as:
this.toast("My message")

// But "this" is implicit, so we can shorten it to:
toast("My message")

The above magic, as well as the mix-in style ability of the import static extension of Xtend, is used to great effect in Xtendroid.

In addition, Xtendroid implements several Active Annotations which remove most of the boilerplate-code that's associated with Android development. Here is an example of one of the most powerful Xtendroid annotations, @AndroidActivity:

@AndroidActivity(R.layout.my_activity) class MyActivity {

	@OnCreate
	def init(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
		myTextView.text = "some text"
	}

}

@AndroidActivity automatically extends the Activity class, loads the layout into the activity, parses the specified layout file, and creates getters/setters for each of the views contained there-in, and checks for the existence of all onClick methods, at edit-time! You will immediately get code-completion and outline for your layout widgets! Any method annotated with @OnCreate is called at runtime once the views are ready, although as with everything in Xtendroid, you are free to implement the onCreate() method yourself.

Note that the Active Annotations run at edit-time and simply generate the usual Java code for you, so there is no runtime performance impact. View this video of how this works and how well it integrates with the Eclipse IDE: http://vimeo.com/77024959

Getting Started

Method 1: Copy JAR file in

• Download the latest release from https://github.com/tobykurien/Xtendroid/tree/master/Xtendroid/release
• Copy the JAR file into your Android project's libs folder
• If your project isn't Xtend-enabled yet:
  • Right-click on your project -> Properties -> Java Build Path
  • Click Libraries -> Add library -> Xtend Library
• Now you can use it as documented here.

Method 2: Add as library project

• Git clone this repository and import it using Eclipse.
• Add it as a library project to your Android project:
  • Right-click your project -> Properties -> Android -> (Library) Add -> Xtendroid
• If your project isn't Xtend-enabled yet:
  • Right-click on your project -> Properties -> Java Build Path
  • Click Libraries -> Add library -> Xtend Library
• Now you can use it as documented here.

Method 3: Gradle build config

• In your build.gradle file, add a compile dependency for 'com.github.tobykurien:xtendroid:0.11.+' and also add the Xtend compiler
• A typical build.gradle file looks as follows:

buildscript {
    repositories {
        jcenter()
        mavenCentral()
    }

    dependencies {
        classpath 'com.android.tools.build:gradle:1.0.+'
        classpath 'org.xtend:xtend-android-gradle-plugin:0.3.+'
    }
}

apply plugin: 'android'
apply plugin: 'org.xtend.xtend-android'

repositories {
    mavenCentral()
}

android {
	dependencies {
		compile 'com.github.tobykurien:xtendroid:0.11.+'
		
		compile 'org.eclipse.xtext:org.eclipse.xtext.xbase.lib:2.7.+'
		// Use this instead if you're not using Google Guava, for a slimmer runtime:
		// compile 'org.eclipse.xtext:org.eclipse.xtext.xbase.lib.slim:2.7.+'

		// other dependencies here
	}

	// other build config stuff
}

Xtend

For more about the Xtend language, see http://xtend-lang.org

Gotchas

Note that Xtend and Xtendroid are currently only supported in Eclipse (Xtend is an Eclipse project), although projects using them can be compiled with Maven or Gradle. IntelliJ support for Xtend is being worked on, so it will be usable in Android Studio soon.

There are currently some bugs with the Eclipse Xtend editor that can lead to unexpected behaviour (e.g. compile errors). Here are the current bugs you should know about:

• Android: Editor not refreshing R class
• Android: First-opened Xtend editor shows many errors and never clears those errors after build

If in doubt, clean the project, and re-open the editor.