An Intro into ScreenData in 2021
ScreenData is a data model for displaying UI Screens. A Screen is what contains all the views for ScreenData. Screens have Views which contain all the information they need to be displayed to the screen. ContainerViews can have multiple Views and specify a axis, horizontal or vertical, which the Views are aligned on. Views can have destinations which link to another Screen.
Since ScreenData is a data model, any programming language can implement it! Currently there are two implementations of ScreenData, Kotlin and Swift. Official ScreenData repositories have been created for Typescript, Rust, and Dart. All are open for anyone to implement.
After you have chosen your preferred ScreenData implementation, you can start deciding how you will get some Screen and optionally store it. For instance here are some examples.
- Storing the ScreenData or JSON locally to be able to fetch it instantly
- Fetching the data from a server
- Fetch the data from a server, but then cache a local version of the data until some indeterminate time in the future
ScreenDataUI and CustomView
All of these decisions are influenced by what ScreenDataUI implementation you choose. Currently there are two implementations of ScreenDataUI, iOS (SwiftUI) and Android (Compose). These implementations are intended to be a 1:1 implementation of ScreenData for mobile. Not all implementations use everything that ScreenData has to offer. If you find ScreenData doesn’t have what you need, you can always use a CustomView. When using a CustomView, the front end will need to have its own implementation of the view. CustomViews should use an id so that the front end can tell what to display.