Understanding Dagger 2 for Android development

Question

Here's my code, which I based on some old tutorial found on the internet. There really should be some examples on the main site of Dagger 2, I found it really difficult to understand how to implement all this.

It's really a lot of work to get such a simple app to run. I have two questions:

Do I have to call DaggerLoggerComponent in every class I want to get some components like my Logger class?

Also how can I make the scope of the Logger class a singleton? Right now every button click creates a new logger instance.

Probably I dont understand some underlying concepts, I've only used dependency injection in Spring before and all of this seems strange to me.

public class MainActivity extends AppCompatActivity {

    private Button button;

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

    private void init(){
        button = (Button)findViewById(R.id.button);
        button.setOnClickListener(new View.OnClickListener() {
            @Override
            public void onClick(View v) {
                LoggerComponent component = DaggerLoggerComponent.builder().loggerModule(new LoggerModule()).build();
                component.getLogger().log("Hello!",MainActivity.this);
            }
        });
    }

}


public class Logger {

    private static int i = 0;

    public Logger(){
        i++;
    }

    public static int getI() {
        return i;
    }

    public void log(String text, Context context){
        Toast.makeText(context,text+" "+i,Toast.LENGTH_SHORT).show();
    }
}


@Singleton
@Component(modules={LoggerModule.class})
public interface LoggerComponent {

    Logger getLogger();

}


@Module
public class LoggerModule {
    @Provides
    @Singleton
    Logger provideLogger(){
        return new Logger();
    }
}

Answer 1

The answer is

public class MainActivity extends AppCompatActivity {
    @OnClick(R.id.button) //ButterKnife
    public void onClickButton() {
        logger.log("Hello!");
    }

    @Inject
    Logger logger;

    @Override
    protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
        setContentView(R.layout.activity_main);
        Injector.INSTANCE.getApplicationComponent().inject(this);
        ButterKnife.bind(this);
    }

    @Override
    protected void onDestroy() {
        ButterKnife.unbind(this);
        super.onDestroy();
    }
}

public class Logger {
    private static int i = 0;

    private CustomApplication customApplication;

    public Logger(CustomApplication application) {
        this.customApplication = application;
        i++;
    }

    public static int getI() {
        return i;
    }

    public void log(String text){
        Toast.makeText(customApplication, text + " " + i,Toast.LENGTH_SHORT).show();
    }
}


public interface LoggerComponent {
    Logger logger();
}

@Module
public class ApplicationModule {
    private CustomApplication customApplication;

    public ApplicationModule(CustomApplication customApplication) {
        this.customApplication = customApplication;
    }

    @Provides
    public CustomApplication customApplication() {
        return customApplication;
    }
}

@Module
public class LoggerModule {
    @Provides
    @Singleton
    Logger provideLogger(){
        return new Logger();
    }
}


@Singleton
@Component(modules={LoggerModule.class, ApplicationModule.class})
public interface ApplicationComponent extends LoggerComponent {
    CustomApplication customApplication();

    void inject(MainActivity mainActivity);
}

public class CustomApplication extends Application {
    @Override
    public void onCreate() {
        super.onCreate();
        Injector.INSTANCE.initializeApplicationComponent(this);
    }
}

public enum Injector {
    INSTANCE;

    private ApplicationComponent applicationComponent;

    public ApplicationComponent getApplicationComponent() {
        return applicationComponent;
    }

    void initializeApplicationComponent(CustomApplication customApplication) {
        this.applicationComponent = DaggerApplicationComponent.builder()
            .applicationModule(new ApplicationModule(customApplication))
            .build();
    }
}

This is currently our Dagger2 architecture.

EDIT: This is from our actual code for Retrofit stuff from our application we're making:

public interface RecordingService {    
    ScheduledRecordsXML getScheduledRecords(long userId)
            throws ServerErrorException;
}

public class RecordingServiceImpl
        implements RecordingService {

    private static final String TAG = RecordingServiceImpl.class.getSimpleName();

    private RetrofitRecordingService retrofitRecordingService;

    public RecordingServiceImpl(RetrofitRecordingService retrofitRecordingService) {
        this.retrofitRecordingService = retrofitRecordingService;
    }

    @Override
    public ScheduledRecordsXML getScheduledRecords(long userId)
            throws ServerErrorException {
        try {
            return retrofitRecordingService.getScheduledPrograms(String.valueOf(userId));
        } catch(RetrofitError retrofitError) {
            Log.e(TAG, "Error occurred in downloading XML file.", retrofitError);
            throw new ServerErrorException(retrofitError);
        }
    }
}

@Module
public class NetworkClientModule {
    @Provides
    @Singleton
    public OkHttpClient okHttpClient() {
        OkHttpClient okHttpClient = new OkHttpClient();
        okHttpClient.interceptors().add(new HeaderInterceptor());
        return okHttpClient;
    }
}

@Module(includes = {NetworkClientModule.class})
public class ServiceModule {
    @Provides
    @Singleton
    public RecordingService recordingService(OkHttpClient okHttpClient, Persister persister, AppConfig appConfig) {
        return new RecordingServiceImpl(
                new RestAdapter.Builder().setEndpoint(appConfig.getServerEndpoint())
                        .setConverter(new SimpleXMLConverter(persister))
                        .setClient(new OkClient(okHttpClient))
                        .setLogLevel(RestAdapter.LogLevel.NONE)
                        .build()
                        .create(RetrofitRecordingService.class));
    }

    //...
}

public interface RetrofitRecordingService {
    @GET("/getScheduledPrograms")
    ScheduledRecordsXML getScheduledPrograms(@Query("UserID") String userId);
}

public interface ServiceComponent {
    RecordingService RecordingService();

    //...
}

public interface AppDomainComponent
        extends InteractorComponent, ServiceComponent, ManagerComponent, ParserComponent {
}

@Singleton
@Component(modules = {
        //...
        InteractorModule.class,
        ManagerModule.class,
        ServiceModule.class,
        ParserModule.class
    //...
})
public interface ApplicationComponent
        extends AppContextComponent, AppDataComponent, AppDomainComponent, AppUtilsComponent, AppPresentationComponent {
    void inject(DashboardActivity dashboardActivity);
    //...
}

Answer 2

Do I have to call DaggerLoggerComponent in every class I want to get some components like my Logger class?

Yes for all classes that created by the system like Application, Activity and Service. but for you own classes, you don't need that. just annotate you constructor with @inject and dagger will provide your dependencies.

Also how can I make the scope of the Logger class a singleton? Right now every button click creates a new logger instance.

Your setup for singleton is correct. but you have to initialize the component one time after the activity is created (onCreate) in order to let dagger to inject all fields. Also you can utilize lazy injection feature if you don't need the Logger object right away.

    @Inject
    Logger logger;

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

        LoggerComponent component = DaggerLoggerComponent.builder().loggerModule(new LoggerModule()).build();

        component.inject(this);

        init();
    }

Then you can access your object without take the reference from the component:

private void init(){
        button = (Button)findViewById(R.id.button);
        button.setOnClickListener(new View.OnClickListener() {
            @Override
            public void onClick(View v) {
                logger.log("Hello!",MainActivity.this);
            }
        });
    }

In summary: You have to initialize the component in all classes that use field injections.

UPDATE: To do the actual injection, you have to declare inject() method into your component and dagger will automatically implement it. This method will take care of provide any object annotated with @Inject.