Avoid requiring binding when checking permission state

[hrodrick]

Hi, I am verifying if a user has permissions on background via an android service at startup, and I am receiving an exception that crashes the app because the app's activity is null (which is true). The problem is that the activity is expected to be null, because I am verifying permissions in background. My use case is to avoid collecting background location data if the user never gave permission.

I check permissions with this:

permissionsController.let {
    it.getPermissionState(Permission.LOCATION) != PermissionState.Granted
            || it.getPermissionState(Permission.BACKGROUND_LOCATION) != PermissionState.Granted
}

As far as i know, there shouldn´t be any need to bind the controller with an activity if we are just checking if permissions are granted (so, not prompting)

is this a bug, or am I missing something?

Thanks!

[DavidCorrado]

I am running into similar issues. So same as you I want to basically check the permission which just requires application context.

If you review the code you can see it could work with applicaiton context. But really the only way the library works is through compose. As far as I saw you cant not create PermissionController without compose through the factory.

But you can see that PermissionController actually allows just application context to fetch the permissions but you cant create it directly and need an expect actual to create PermissionController manually and pass in Application Context on Android. Then you can DI the PermissionController. You can use a very limited subset of methods.

The library would have to be refactored to make this safer. So only expose the subset of methods that work without activity in something you can DI.

Simple partial example

//common

expect fun getPermissionController(): PermissionsController

//android

actual fun getPermissionController(): PermissionsController = PermissionsController(MyApplication.instance)

Note I have not released fully tested this on all platforms

[DavidCorrado]

Actually does not work. When you request permissions it getPermissionState which can request into shouldShowRequestPermissionRationale which needs activity

[DavidCorrado]

New solution is this

expect fun isPermissionGranted(permission: Permission): Boolean
actual fun isPermissionGranted(permission: Permission): Boolean {
    val permissions: List<String> = permission.delegate.getPlatformPermission()
    val status: List<Int> =
        permissions.map {
            ContextCompat.checkSelfPermission(MyApplication.instance, it)
        }
    val isAllGranted: Boolean = status.all { it == PackageManager.PERMISSION_GRANTED }
    return isAllGranted
}

[BahelanBaishan]

in commonMain:

import androidx.compose.runtime.staticCompositionLocalOf
import dev.icerock.moko.permissions.PermissionsController

// Top Level
val LocalPermissionsController = staticCompositionLocalOf<PermissionsController> { error("CompositionLocal LocalPermissionsController not present") }

androidMain:

class MainActivity : ComponentActivity() {
    override fun onCreate(savedInstanceState: Bundle?) {
        enableEdgeToEdge()
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState)
        setContent {
            val permissionControllersFactory = rememberPermissionsControllerFactory()
            val permissionsController = remember(permissionControllersFactory) { permissionControllersFactory.createPermissionsController() }
            
            // Listen lifecycle
            BindEffect(permissionsController)

            // Provider the PermissionsController
            CompositionLocalProvider(LocalPermissionsController provides permissionsController) {
                App()
            }
        }
    }
}

commonMain:

val permissionsController = LocalPermissionsController.current
val coroutineScope: CoroutineScope = rememberCoroutineScope()

// Some effect or your button onClick callback.
onClick = {
    coroutineScope.launch {
        permissionsController.providePermission(Permission.RECORD_AUDIO)
    }
}

in your gradle.kts:

implementation("dev.icerock.moko:permissions:0.20.1") // core lib
implementation("dev.icerock.moko:permissions-microphone:0.20.1") // for you needed permission
implementation("dev.icerock.moko:permissions-compose:0.20.1") // compose, provide the rememberXxx functions

I think the current library needs a better way to provide a PermissionController instead of relying on a ViewModel, because I feel that checking permissions in the ViewModel is not very accurate. This also aligns with the way pure Android Compose handles permissions.