dagger-2 Getting started with dagger-2 Learn Dagger2 with simple example

Example

I have read and watched a lot of different Dagger2 tutorials but most of them are too long or hard to understand so I decided to write a new simple and short tutorial for Dagger2, I hope you like it.

Why we need it?

• Simplifies access to shared instances: It provides a simple way to obtain references to shared instances, for example once we declare in Dagger our singleton instances such as SharedPrefrences then we can declare fields with a simple @Inject annotation.
• Easier unit and integration testing: We can easily swap out modules that make network responses and mock out this behavior.

Lest's start with a simple example

Full source of example is available on my GitHub account.

Add Dagger2 dependencies

First of all we need to add Dagger2 dependencies, Put below code to your module-level build.gradle file.

compile "com.google.dagger:dagger:$dagger_version"
compile "com.google.dagger:dagger-android:$dagger_version"
compile "com.google.dagger:dagger-android-support:$dagger_version"
annotationProcessor "com.google.dagger:dagger-compiler:$dagger_version"

If you are getting an error like Error:Conflict with dependency 'com.google.code.findbugs:jsr305' in project ':app' you should add the following to your main app/build.gradle file.

configurations.all {
   resolutionStrategy.force 'com.google.code.findbugs:jsr305:3.0.1'
}

Two simple class

We have two classes (Vehicle and Motor), Vehicle class needs Motor class to run and MainActivity needs Vehicle class. We will use Dagger2 to provide these instances.

class Vehicle {
   private Motor motor;

  @Inject
  Vehicle(Motor motor) {
     this.motor = motor;
  }

  void increaseSpeed(int value) {
     motor.accelerate(value);
  }

  void decreaseSpeed(int value) {
     motor.decelerate(value);
  }

  void stop() {
     motor.brake();
  }

  int getSpeed() {
     return motor.getRpm();
  }
}

Motor class:

class Motor {
  private int rpm;

  Motor() {
    this.rpm = 0;
  }

  int getRpm() {
    return rpm;
  }

  void accelerate(int value) {
    rpm += value;
  }

  void decelerate(int value) {
    rpm -= value;
  }

  void brake() {
    rpm = 0;
  }
}

Module class

Module class is responsible for providing objects which can be injected, In this example we want to inject Motor class to Vehicle class and inject Vehicle class to MainActivity so  we should create MyModule to providing these instances.

@Module
class MyModule {

  @Provides
  @Singleton
  Motor provideMotor() {
    return new Motor();
  }

  @Provides
  @Singleton
  Vehicle provideVehicle() {
    return new Vehicle(new Motor());
  }
}

@Provide annotation: returned object from this method is available for dependency injection.

@Component interface

Dagger2 needs component interface to know how should it create instances from our classes.

@Singleton
@Component(modules = {MyModule.class})
interface MyComponent {
  Vehicle provideVehicle();

  void inject(MainActivity main);
}

@Component interface: connection between the provider of object and the objects which express a dependency.

Inject Dependency in Constructor

By adding @Inject annotation, dagger2 can automatically create an instance from that object like our example Motor object in Vehicle class.

Inject dependency in MainClass

Dagger2 can automatically inject dependencies in constructors, but Android components (activities, fragments, etc.) are instantiated by Android framework which makes it difficult to use dependency injection on them, so we should inject them manually like below code:

public class MainActivity extends AppCompatActivity {
  @Inject
  Vehicle vehicle;

  @Override
  protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
    super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
    setContentView(R.layout.activity_main);

    MyComponent component = DaggerMyComponent.builder().build();
    component.inject(this);
  }
}

That's it, I hope you enjoy.