Create new Live Template group in Android Studio

Now create a new template by pressing + again or copy an existing template to the newly created group. I usually copy an existing template but for purpose of this article, I'll show how to create one from scratch. Next, you need to give an abbreviation for your new template. This is what you will be typing in the editor to access the template. I will name it byVB which is shortened form of by viewBinding. Put appropriate description so that other people in your team can understand what this template is about if you choose to share it. In Template text section put the following code

private val binding by viewBinding($CLASS$::$METHOD$)

This is what will automatically be typed when you select the template from suggestions in the editor. The last bit is to select context, context lets Android Studio know where to apply this template. Select Kotlin->Classfor purpose of this template. Here is how final this looks

Creating Live Template for viewBinding delegate

Let us see this in action

viewBinding delegate with Live Template

Isn’t that cool? That’s just a declaration of binding instance though. We still need to make changes in code such that all views are accessed via this binding instance. Let’s see how we can minimize that effort.

Use Kotlin scope functions where applicable

We declared binding instance quickly but what about its actual usage? We still need to access views like binding.textView and so on everywhere. Let's say you have this bunch of code in your Activity/Fragment somewhere

Accessing views using synthetics

one way to migrate this code is this

Access views using View Binding instance

But thanks to Kotlin you can do this

Access views inside Kotlin scope function

with is one of the scope functions that language provides us. You might also need to use binding?.apply {} at times. Read more about scope functions here and here

If you are thinking that its too much work to type in that with and then move existing code inside {} block, stop thinking and read on.

Use Live Template to insert scope functions

If you have worked on Android Studio for some time you know that you can select a bunch of code and then press CMD+OPT+T (ALT+CTRL+T on windows) on mac and open a context menu that lets you surround that selected code with blocks like if, if/else, try/catch etc. We are gonna create a similar template for view binding with block. This template needs to go in a special template group called surround. Since we have already gone through the process of creating a new Live Template I will just show important bits here. Here is the live template code that we need to put

with(binding) {
$SELECTION$
}

similarly, you can create a template for apply case.

binding?.apply {
$SELECTION$
}

Here is the final configuration of this template

Android Studio live template for surround with scope function

Here it is in action

androidExtensions {
experimental = true
}

apply plugin: 'kotlin-android-extensions'