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Refactoring a legacy Android application to use Kotlin coroutines but facing threading issues

👀 Views: 24 💬 Answers: 1 📅 Created: 2025-09-06
Android Coroutines Refactoring Kotlin

Does anyone know how to I've searched everywhere and can't find a clear answer. I'm sure I'm missing something obvious here, but While refactoring a legacy Android application to leverage Kotlin coroutines, I've encountered some threading issues that are impacting our production deployment timeline. Currently, the app relies heavily on AsyncTasks, which are inefficient and lead to callback hell. Transitioning to coroutines seemed like a natural fit for cleaner, more maintainable code. I've started by converting some of the AsyncTasks to coroutine-based suspending functions. Here’s a snippet of what I’ve done so far: ```kotlin fun fetchData(): Deferred<Data> = GlobalScope.async { // Simulating a network call val response = apiService.getData() processResponse(response) } ``` However, I've noticed that certain parts of the code rely on UI updates after the data fetch completes, and I’m not quite sure how to handle the threading context correctly without causing exceptions. My current implementation leads to `IllegalStateException` when attempting to update views from a non-UI thread. To tackle this, I’ve tried using `withContext(Dispatchers.Main)` but it doesn't seem to resolve the exceptions effectively. Here’s my attempt: ```kotlin fun updateUI() { GlobalScope.launch(Dispatchers.Main) { val data = fetchData().await() textView.text = data.toString() // This often throws exceptions } } ``` Additionally, I have read about the use of `LifecycleScope` to manage coroutine lifecycles better, but the documentation doesn't clarify how to integrate that with my existing architecture, which uses fragments heavily. I’m also hesitant to make sweeping changes that could introduce new bugs into the production app. Any insights on best practices for refactoring this functionality using coroutines while ensuring thread safety would be greatly appreciated. I’m particularly interested in how to manage the coroutine lifecycle in the context of fragment states effectively. I'd be grateful for any help. For context: I'm using Kotlin on macOS. Thanks for your help in advance!