SharedFlow vs. StateFlow: Best Practices and Real-world examples

<p>Dive into the world of Kotlin flows with this in-depth comparison of SharedFlow and StateFlow. Here&rsquo;s an overview of both types of flows and their use cases:</p> <p><code>SharedFlow</code>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<code>StateFlow</code>&nbsp;are both parts of Kotlin&#39;s&nbsp;<code>kotlinx.coroutines</code>&nbsp;library, specifically designed to handle asynchronous data streams. Both are built on top of&nbsp;<code>Flow</code>&nbsp;and are meant for different purposes.</p> <ol> <li>SharedFlow:</li> </ol> <ul> <li>A&nbsp;<code>SharedFlow</code>&nbsp;is a hot flow that can have multiple collectors. It can emit values independently of the collectors, and multiple collectors can collect the same values from the flow.</li> <li>It&rsquo;s useful when you need to broadcast a value to multiple collectors or when you want to have multiple subscribers to the same stream of data.</li> <li>It does not have an initial value, and you can configure its replay cache to store a certain number of previously emitted values for new collectors.</li> </ul> <p><img alt="" src="https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:770/1*tu6KalOk971mR6yC5LmFQQ.png" style="height:378px; width:700px" /></p> <p>SharedFlow can broadcast values to multiple collectors simultaneously</p> <p>Example usage:</p> <pre> val sharedFlow = MutableSharedFlow&lt;Int&gt;() // Collect values from sharedFlow launch { sharedFlow.collect { value -&gt; println(&quot;Collector 1 received: $value&quot;) } } // Collect values from sharedFlow launch { sharedFlow.collect { value -&gt; println(&quot;Collector 2 received: $value&quot;) } } // Emit values to sharedFlow launch { repeat(3) { i -&gt; sharedFlow.emit(i) } }</pre> <ol> <li>StateFlow:</li> </ol> <ul> <li>A&nbsp;<code>StateFlow</code>&nbsp;is a hot flow that represents a state, holding a single value at a time. It is also a conflated flow, meaning that when a new value is emitted, the most recent value is retained and immediately emitted to new collectors.</li> <li>It is useful when you need to maintain a single source of truth for a state and automatically update all the collectors with the latest state.</li> <li>It always has an initial value and only stores the latest emitted value.</li> </ul> <p>&nbsp;<a href="https://medium.com/@mortitech/sharedflow-vs-stateflow-a-comprehensive-guide-to-kotlin-flows-503576b4de31">Visit Now</a></p>