Graywater: an android library for performant lists
Graywater is a RecyclerView adapter that facilitates the performant decomposition of complex and varied list items. It does this by mapping large data models to multiple viewholders, splitting the work needed to create a complex list item over multiple frames.
The concept is based off of Facebook's post on a faster news feed and Components for Android, which have been realized as Litho.
Tumblr developed Graywater to improve scroll performance, reduce memory usage, and lay the foundation for a more modular codebase.
The name "Graywater" comes from the process of recycling water.
What is it?
An adapter basically takes a list of models (of type T) and maps them to a list of viewholders (of type VH extends RecyclerView.ViewHolder).
One naive solution is to map models directly to viewholders. For example, a list of "posts" can have a viewholder for each post. But this architecture quickly becomes slow and unwieldy if there is either a large variety of posts or if individual posts are complex.
So to improve performance, the parts of a post that are offscreen can be recycled.
model views
+---------+ +------+
| | | head | <------- does not exist
| | +------+ <------------+
| item #1 | | body | <---+ |
| | +------+ | |
| | | foot | | |
+---------+ +------+ | |
screen view hierarchy
+---------+ +------+ | |
| | | head | | |
| | +------+ | |
| item #2 | | body | <---+ |
| | +------+ <------------+
| | | body | <------- does not exist
+---------+ +------+
Due to Tumblr's needs, there are additional features that help improve performance and reduce memory usage:
- Viewholders are shared between models of the same and different types, e.g. a body viewholder can be shared between a item #1 and item #2.
- Models can have multiple viewholders of the same type, e.g. an item can have an unlimited number of body viewholders.
This results in a minimal number of viewholders to maximize cache effectiveness and reduce memory pressure.
In order to accomplish this, we introduce the concept of a Binder, which takes a model (T) and binds it to a viewholder (VH).
+-------+ +--------+ +------------+
| Model | --> | Binder | --> | ViewHolder |
+-------+ +--------+ +------------+
We no longer desire the one-to-one relationship between models and viewholders that, because monolithic models result in monolithic viewholders. For example, a video post (VideoPost) used to have a corresponding VideoPostViewHolder. Instead, we want VideoPost to be composed of a header, body, and footer.
+--------+ +------------+
/--> | Binder | --> | ViewHolder |
+-------+ +---+ / +--------+ +------------+
| Model | --> | ? | *----> | Binder | --> | ViewHolder |
+-------+ +---+ \ +--------+ +------------+
\--> | Binder | --> | ViewHolder |
+--------+ +------------+
To manage this relationship, we introduce the concept of an ItemBinder, which aggregates the binders needed to display a post. It takes a model (T) and returns a list of binders, each of which bind the model to a specific viewholder.
+------------+
/-----> | ItemBinder |
/ +------------+
/ v
/ +--------+ +------------+
/ /----> | Binder | --> | ViewHolder |
+-------+ / +--------+ +------------+
| Model | *------> | Binder | --> | ViewHolder |
+-------+ \ +--------+ +------------+
\----> | Binder | --> | ViewHolder |
+--------+ +------------+
ItemBinder<? extends T, ? extends VH>takes a modelTand maps it to a list of binders of typeBinder<T, ? extends VH>.Binder<? super T, ? extends VH>takes a model of typeTand maps it to aViewHolderof typeVH
A minor design point is that RecyclerView.Adapter#onCreate() creates the viewholders, so some sort of mechanism for creating viewholders is necessary. This is where ViewHolderCreator comes in - it is a model-independent way of creating viewholders (in other libraries with a one-to-one relationship between models and viewholders, this code would live in the model - e.g. Epoxy).
+------------+
/-----> | ItemBinder |
/ +------------+
/ v
/ +--------+ +------------+ +-------------------+
/ /----> | Binder | --> | ViewHolder | <-- | ViewHolderCreator |
+-------+ / +--------+ +------------+ +-------------------+
| Model | *------> | Binder | --> | ViewHolder | <-- | ViewHolderCreator |
+-------+ \ +--------+ +------------+ +-------------------+
\----> | Binder | --> | ViewHolder | <-- | ViewHolderCreator |
+--------+ +------------+ +-------------------+
Because binders should not contain per-item state, it is better to use dependency injection to inject the binders into the list of binders. To facilitate this, a BinderProvider is used to provide binders to item binders. It is also used to provide the ViewHolderCreator instances (although this is just for convenience). By doing this, related Binder, ItemBinder and ViewHolderCreator classes can be grouped together.
+------------+ +----------------+
/-----> | ItemBinder | <-------------------- | BinderProvider |
/ +------------+ +----------------+
/ v v
/ +--------+ +------------+ +-------------------+
/ /----> | Binder | --> | ViewHolder | <-- | ViewHolderCreator |
+-------+ / +--------+ +------------+ +-------------------+
| Model | *------> | Binder | --> | ViewHolder | <-- | ViewHolderCreator |
+-------+ \ +--------+ +------------+ +-------------------+
\----> | Binder | --> | ViewHolder | <-- | ViewHolderCreator |
+--------+ +------------+ +-------------------+
How do you use it?
Graywater relies heavily on generics for type safety - here are the major type parameters:
Tis the base model type.VHis the base viewholder type.MTis the type of the model type (e.g.Class<?>).
Although this may seem overly generic, it is convenient if your base model or viewholder type has methods you need to access.
Add a model that subclasses T.
class Text {
String text;
}Create the viewholder(s).
class TextViewHolder extends RecyclerView.ViewHolder {
TextView textView;
public TextViewHolder(View view) {
super(view);
textView = (TextView) view.findViewById(R.id.text);
}
}Create the corresponding ViewHolderCreator implementations.
class TextViewHolderCreator implements GraywaterAdapter.ViewHolderCreator {
public TextViewHolder create(final ViewGroup parent) {
return new TextViewHolder(GraywaterAdapter.inflate(parent, R.layout.item_text));
}
public int getViewType() {
return R.layout.item_text;
}
}Create the Binder<T, ? extends VH> implementations for each ViewHolder.
class TextBinder implements GraywaterAdapter.Binder<Text, TextViewHolder> {
public Class<TextViewHolder> getViewHolderType() {
return TextViewHolder.class;
}
public void prepare(final Text model,
final List<GraywaterAdapter.Binder<? super Text, ? extends TextViewHolder>> binders,
final int binderIndex) {
}
public void bind(final Text model,
final TextViewHolder holder,
final List<GraywaterAdapter.Binder<? super Text, ? extends TextViewHolder>> binders,
final int binderIndex,
final GraywaterAdapter.ActionListener<Text, TextViewHolder> actionListener) {
holder.textView.setText(model.text);
}
public void unbind(final TextViewHolder holder) {
holder.textView.setText(null);
}
}Create the ItemBinder that returns the list of binders for the model.
class TextItemBinder implements GraywaterAdapter.ItemBinder<Text, RecyclerView.ViewHolder> {
TextBinder textBinder;
public TextItemBinder(TextBinder textBinder) {
this.textBinder = textBinder;
}
public List<GraywaterAdapter.Binder<? super Text, ? extends RecyclerView.ViewHolder>> getBinderList(
final Text model,
final int position) {
return new ArrayList<GraywaterAdapter.Binder<? super Text, ? extends RecyclerView.ViewHolder>>() {{
add(textBinder);
add(textBinder);
}};
}
}Lastly, subclass GraywaterAdapter and register the created classes!
private static class TextAdapter extends GraywaterAdapter<Text, RecyclerView.ViewHolder, Class<?>> {
public TextAdapter() {
register(new TextViewHolderCreator(), TextViewHolder.class);
final TextBinder textBinder = new TextBinder();
register(String.class, new TextItemBinder(textBinder), null);
}
@Override
protected Class<?> getModelType(final Text model) {
return model.getClass();
}
}You can then add items using GraywaterAdapter.add() or remove them with GraywaterAdapter.remove(). Note that getItemCount() will return the number of viewholders, not the number of model objects in your list. getModelType(MT) will generally have the example implementation, but it may be useful to have a custom implementation if subtypes have different definitions across types, or if you need a "default" type.
In example code, an adapter is created that repeats each item in the list once.
How does it work?
At its core, Graywater maps models to viewholders, which basically means it is a just a dictionary. These are the fields used in a dictionary-like way:
List<T> mItems- the list of items (or a map of position to item)Map<Class<? extends VH>, ViewHolderCreator> mViewHolderCreatorMap- the map of viewholder class toViewHolderCreator.Map<MT, ItemBinder<? extends T, ? extends VH>> mItemBinderMap- the map ofMT(model type) toItemBinderMap<MT, ActionListener<? extends T, ? extends VH>> mActionListenerMap- the map ofMT(model type) toActionListener
So in add(), the new model is added to the list of items. In register(), the parameters are added to the respective map.
A simple optimization is to cache the ItemBinders. This is done by binderListCache, which is of type List<List<Binder<? super T, ? extends VH>>>. Every time add() is called, getBinderList() is called and the return value is added to the cache.
What is MT?
protected abstract MT getModelType(T model);Instead of automatically using the class of the model as the model's type, it can be anything (preferably a similar property of the model).
Note that RecyclerView.Adapter has these methods:
abstract class Adapter<VH extends ViewHolder> {
abstract VH onCreateViewHolder(ViewGroup parent, int viewType);
abstract void onBindViewHolder(VH holder, int position);
int getItemViewType(int position);
abstract int getItemCount();
}It is important to note that position in the above methods is the viewholder position, not the model position. This distinction is extremely important, because when we are given the viewholder position when we need the model position.
For now, we assume that viewType has a one-to-one correspondence to the viewholder class.
Here is a visualization of the model and viewholder positions:
model viewholder
position position
+-----+ +-----+
| | | 0 |
| | +-----+
| | | 1 |
| 0 | +-----+
| | | 2 |
| | +-----+
| | | 3 |
+-----+ +-----+
+-----+ +-----+
| | | 4 |
| 1 | +-----+
| | | 5 |
+-----+ +-----+
If we are given a viewholder position of 5, we need to arrive at the model position of 1, that way we can grab the model from the backing data store.
The way to do this is to iterate through the models, going to the corresponding ItemBinder and accumulating the size of the list that is returned. Unfortunately, this is slow.
But in order to make it fast, we need to cache a lot of intermediary state.
On add(), we compute these two caches, viewHolderToItemPosition and itemPositionToFirstViewHolderPosition. Note that the code uses item to refer to the model position.
model viewholder viewHolderToItemPos itemPosToFirstViewHolderPos
position position
+-----+ +-----+
| | | 0 | { 0, 0 }
| | +-----+
| | | 1 | { 1, 0 }
| 0 | +-----+ { 0, 0 }
| | | 2 | { 2, 0 }
| | +-----+
| | | 3 | { 3, 0 }
+-----+ +-----+
+-----+ +-----+
| | | 4 | { 4, 1 }
| 1 | +-----+ { 1, 4 }
| | | 5 | { 5, 1 }
+-----+ +-----+
viewHolderToItemPositionCache is also used for getItemCount().
itemPositionToFirstViewHolderPosition is primarily used for one purpose: to determine the position of the viewholder and associated binder in the list of viewholders for a given model. In the above example, the viewholder at position 5 is the 2nd viewholder for the 2nd model. This is important when there is more than one instance of a viewholder for a model, such as reblog comments.
getItemViewType() works by tracking the registered ViewHolderCreators, which have this interface:
interface ViewHolderCreator {
RecyclerView.ViewHolder create(ViewGroup parent);
int getViewType();
}When a new ViewHolderCreator is registered, it is added to viewHolderCreatorList, which is of type SparseArray<Class<? extends VH>>, and associates the viewType with the correct class. The class is then associated with the ViewHolderCreator via viewHolderCreatorMap, which is of type Map<Class<? extends VH>, ViewHolderCreator>.
viewHolderCreatorList viewHolderCreatorMap
+------------------------------+ +---------------------------------------+
| viewtype -> ViewHolder.class | | ViewHolder.class -> ViewHolderCreator |
+==============================+ +=======================================+
| 8324 -> Header.class | | Header.class -> HeaderCreator |
+------------------------------+ +---------------------------------------+
| 9802 -> Body.class | | Body.class -> BodyCreator |
+------------------------------+ +---------------------------------------+
| 2383 -> Footer.class | | Footer.class -> FooterCreator |
+------------------------------+ +---------------------------------------+
To implement getItemViewType() So when given a viewholder position,
viewHolderToItemPosis used to retrieve the model position.binderListCacheand the model position is used to get the list of binders.itemPosToFirstViewHolderPosis used to retrieve the position of the first viewholder.- The binder position in the list of binders is computed.
- The correct binder for the viewholder position is retrieved.
viewHolderCreatorMapis passed theBinder.getViewHolderType()to get theViewHolderCreator.ViewHolderCreator.getViewType()is called to get theviewType.
onCreateViewHolder(ViewGroup parent, int viewType) is quite a bit simpler:
return (VH) viewHolderCreatorMap.get(getViewHolderClass(viewType)).create(parent);viewHolderCreatorListis used to get the class from theviewTypeviewHolderCreatorMapis used to get theViewHolderCreator- The
ViewHolderCreatorcreates the new viewholder.
onBindViewHolder(VH holder, int viewHolderPosition) is implemented by following the first 5 steps of getItemViewType(), and then calling Binder.bind() with the model and the viewholder.
Other features
In bind(), the adapter looks ahead to the next numViewHoldersToPrepare() viewholders (default 3) and calls Binder.prepare() on them. Note that it does not call prepare() more than once, unless unbind() is called. This state is stored in viewHolderPreparedCache which stores the indices of viewholders that have been prepared.
This also works in both directions of the RecyclerView. It checks the order of bind() operations to determine which direction to prepare viewholders in.
ActionListener is a bit of an experimental feature to avoid creating extra ClickListener objects on every bind() call.
An addendum on binders and generics
ItemBinder#getBinderList() has a somewhat complex return type:
List<Binder<? super T, ? extends VH>> getBinderList(@NonNull T model, int position)In particular, Binder<? super T, ? extends VH> is quite confusing.
When you write your binder, try to parameterize the binder with the least-restrictive model it can take and the most restrictive viewholder it can bind to.
If these were your type hierarchies:
Model Type ViewHolder Type
Hierarchy Hierarchy
A 1
/ \ <- Binder -> / \
B C 2 3
- A binder should be written to take
Aif possible,BorCif necessary. - A binder can only be written to take
2or3(note that1should never be registered, because then it is ambiguous).
This can be illustrated with an example
Post BaseViewHolder
/ \ <- Binder -> / \
Text Photo Header Body
If every post has a header, it makes sense to have
HeaderBinder extends Binder<Post, Header>PhotoBinder extends Binder<Photo, Body>TextBinder extends Binder<Text, Body>
That way HeaderBinder can take a Text or a Photo, while PhotoBinder won't ever take a Text.
So what does the ItemBinder<T, VH> look like?
TextItemBinder extends ItemBinder<Text, BaseViewHolder>HeaderBinderTextBinder
PhotoItemBinder extends ItemBinder<Photo, BaseViewHolder>HeaderBinderPhotoBinder
You can see that HeaderBinder binds Post, which is a superclass of Text, while TextBinder binds to Body, which is a subclass of BaseViewHolder.
When registering:
register(Text.class, textItemBinder)register(Photo.class, photoItemBInder)
assuming the class is the model type.
The adapter should be of type GraywaterAdapter<Post, BaseViewHolder>, the superclasses for all the types used.
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License
Copyright 2017 Tumblr, Inc.
Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the “License”); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0.
Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an “AS IS” BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.