Building Reactive Component Systems with Kotlin
Article Summary
Zsolt Kocsi from Bumble reveals how his team tamed the chaos of reactive Android components. The secret? Two minimal interfaces and a powerful abstraction that makes subscription management disappear.
This is part two of Bumble's deep dive into their MVICore architecture. Kocsi tackles a critical challenge: as reactive components multiply in your codebase, how do you manage the explosion of subscriptions and lifecycles without drowning in boilerplate?
Key Takeaways
- Built system on just two RxJava interfaces: ObservableSource<T> and Consumer<T>
- Binder class auto-manages subscriptions across Android lifecycles (create/destroy, start/stop)
- Custom lifecycles work beyond Android: dialog display, async operations, DI scopes
- Binding code reads like sentences, providing high-level system overview
- Subscriptions automatically re-subscribe and dispose across multiple lifecycle cycles
Critical Insight
By abstracting subscription management into a Binder with flexible lifecycle support, Bumble's team separated the concern of connecting components from managing their lifecycles, resulting in concise, readable reactive systems.
