Can't get the examples working

[mortenholmgaard]

First thanks for what seems like a great library with great technical solution to the problem and good documentation as well.

But I can't get it to work, so I have a few questions/bug findings:

1. We are not using databinding, but I there seems also to be a great api for that case.
   But trying to use the examples only gives me a black box, no animation at all. I have tried to set almost every property without any animation as a result.
   What is the problem do you think?

    SkeletonDrawable.create(this).apply {
        this.getProps().apply {
            this.enabled = true
            this.allowSavedState = true
            this.shimmerRayProperties.apply {
                this.shimmerRayThickness = 10.dp
                this.shimmerRayTilt = 0.3f
            }
        }
    }

    SkeletonDrawable.create(this)
        .build()
        .setEnabled(true)
        .setAllowSavedState(true)
        .withShimmerBuilder {
            setThickness(10.dp)
            setTilt(0.3f)
            setAnimationDuration(300L)
        }
        .setCornerRadii(3f)
        .setColor(MutableColor(appCtx.getColor(R.color.green)))
        .withBoneBuilder(generateId()) {
            setColor(MutableColor(appCtx.getColor(R.color.lemon)))
            setMaxThickness(12.dp)
            setMinThickness(10.dp)
            setCornerRadii(CornerRadii(3f))
            setEnabled(true)
            setTransitionDuration(300L)
        }
        .setUseStateTransition(true)

2. There are quite a few properties from "Example Usages 1" that does not seems to be accessible from the other approaches.
   Some of them seems important, is I just me that can't find them?

app:skeletonGenerateBones
app:skeletonAnimateRestoredBounds

3. When creating a SkeletonDrawable for a ViewGroup, how then to select which child views that should be skeletonable?
4. Is it possible to make a View skeletonable without going through it parent, or is the same case as 3. question?
5. In the readme setCornerRadius() should be changed to setCornerRadii()

[EudyContreras]

Hey @mortenholmgaard does the demo app work for you?

[EudyContreras]

@mortenholmgaard I added a demo-3 branch which contains a demo with no-data binding

I will address your points:
1: Check out the demo-3 branch for a more concrete example
2: At the moment app:skeletonGenerateBones is a property that is set to true by default but can be omitted when using data-binding. app:skeletonAnimateRestoredBounds is not available yet but I will add it soon. I would recommend applying layout animations to your layout instead.
3: When using data-binding is possible to ignore specific views I will soon allow this when using builders.
4: It is possible to apply skeletons to individual children containers within a layout. I will try to provide more examples on how to do that
5: Thank you very much I will fix that

Thank you for your input which is very valuable I will be addressing this and I will ping you when I do so 🙌

[mortenholmgaard]

Thanks for your feedback :)

1. That example works! But this is a problem with margins. I the demo-3 example when adding start margin to ItemBImage

    <ImageView
        android:id="@+id/ItemBImage"
        android:layout_width="60dp"
        android:layout_height="60dp"
        android:layout_marginStart="30dp"
        ...

then the skeleton width will only be 30dp and not the expected 60dp.

2. Okay

3. and 4. Sounds good - we will be awaiting that 👍 We have cells where multiple things are loading async and there by different parts of the data is appearing one by one. What would be most ideal is also that it is possible in both xml and Builder to se if a view is skeletonable - I don't know if that is possible currently.
   Regarding withBoneBuilder it might be as good to take the view directly because with view binding we have access to that anyway so if that is possible and possibly also makes it faster, that could also be a option to add.

I also looked at the stop skeletons issue #19 but didn't find any good solutions for I using the code, except keeping a reference to the Builder. I would love if it was possible just to have an extension metod on views that is could call to enable/disable skeletons for a view og viewGroup.

Also a different input could be the I don't know if it would improve performance(not that I have seen any problems yet) to have a general reusable builder, so that you could easy reused the same skeletons thought out you app - which will be what you want most of the time. So the skeleton could be added by a property in the view xml or code, perphaps you have a few different once like you do with style for a type of elements.

[EudyContreras]

@mortenholmgaard Thanks for the feedback and observations and feedback.
I will address adress point one as soon as I can.
I will also be making the suggested and improvements to the library and improving the documentation 🙌

@mortenholmgaard I will address your questions below:

it is possible in both xml and Builder to se if a view is skeletonable

It is possible by calling the extension getParentSkeletonDrawable on any view. If it returns null that means it is not skeletonable. I will create a new extension function which will easily allow to check this. The following will be available on the next release 🙌

fun ViewGroup.getParentSkeletonDrawable(): SkeletonDrawable?
fun ViewGroup.hasSkeletonLoaderAncestor(): Boolean
fun ViewGroup.isSkeletonLoader(): Boolean

fun View.getParentSkeletonDrawable(): SkeletonDrawable?
fun View.hasSkeletonLoaderAncestor(): Boolean
fun View.isBoneLoader(): Boolean

Regarding this:

I also looked at the stop skeletons issue #19 but didn't find any good solutions for I using the code, except keeping a reference to the Builder. I would love if it was possible just to have an extension metod on views that is could call to enable/disable skeletons for a view og viewGroup.

That is a great idea. I will add this and it will be available upon the next release:

Regarding this.

Also a different input could be the I don't know if it would improve performance(not that I have seen any problems yet) to have a general reusable builder, so that you could easy reused the same skeletons thought out you app - which will be what you want most of the time. So the skeleton could be added by a property in the view xml or code, perphaps you have a few different once like you do with style for a type of elements.

it will be possible in the next release

[mortenholmgaard]

Great work!!
It is pretty close to be working perfectly for me.

shimmerRayProperties is not really possible to use as ShimmerRayProperties only has an internal constructor. I see there is a similar pattern with the other builders. What is the reason and purpose of that way of handling it?

val properties = SkeletonProperties().apply {
    allowSavedState = false
    useStateTransition = true
    stateTransitionDuration = 200L
    shimmerRayProperties = ShimmerRayProperties()
}

return SkeletonDrawable.builder(properties)

class ShimmerRayProperties internal constructor()

In relation to getParentSkeletonDrawable() I can see that it is internal, so I can't use that one currently.
internal fun View.getParentSkeletonDrawable(): SkeletonDrawable? { ... }
It could also be great to have a variant of it like this, to avoid recreating the SkeletonDrawable when ever a row is recycled, if it has been created before:
fun ViewGroup.getSkeletonDrawable(): SkeletonDrawable? { ... }
This could be related to the reuse in recyclerView problems I currectly have but can't really figure it out without eliminating this cause.

[EudyContreras]

Great work!!
It is pretty close to be working perfectly for me.

Awesome to hear 🙌

shimmerRayProperties is not really possible to use as ShimmerRayProperties only has an internal constructor. I see there is a similar pattern with the other builders. What is the reason and purpose of that way of handling it?

I will be fixing this on the next release 🙏 . It does not make sense for those to be internal...

In relation to getParentSkeletonDrawable() I can see that it is internal, so I can't use that one currently.
internal fun View.getParentSkeletonDrawable(): SkeletonDrawable? { ... }

It is public in the last release.

fun ViewGroup.getSkeletonDrawable(): SkeletonDrawable? { ... }
This could be related to the reuse in recyclerView problems I currectly have but can't really figure it out without eliminating this cause.

Those will be added on the next release 🙌

In addition to the points above I am thinking of adding a property to the drawables which will make it easier to reuse them.
Something like

fun resetForReuse()

[EudyContreras]

Issues and improvements addressed in last release

[mortenholmgaard]

Thanks for the improvements - it makes it possible for me to build a more reuseable aproch to it.

I still have one major problem though with is that it is not possible to disable skeletons on a view almost directly after enabling it. It seems that create or toggle skeleton drawable is dispatched async, which most likely is the reason.
Will you look into if it is possible to make sure that when stopping it shortly after enabling it, it actually will stop again with calling view.disableSkeletonLoading() ?

I made a gist of how I am trying to make it simple reuseable across the app: https://gist.github.com/mortenholmgaard/577657052bec5408b8477e4b6ff3b526

[EudyContreras]

@mortenholmgaard You are welcomed, Thanks for helping me make the lib better by raising this issues and suggesting improvements.

I will look further into this functionality. I will get back to you once I have fixed this 🙌