Kotlin Flows

Kotlin Flows

This reference covers the Flow traps and semantic edge cases — Channel vs SharedFlow, callback bridging, retry/error handling, side effects in transforms, and KMP boundaries — not the basics of cold/hot streams, the operator table, or lifecycle-safe collection.

Channel vs SharedFlow — the semantics that bite

Channel.receiveAsFlow() is fan-out, NOT broadcast. With multiple collectors, each event reaches one collector (the framework picks which), not all of them. If every collector must see every event, you need SharedFlow. This is the trap that's easy to fall into when reaching for Channel to multicast.

For single-consumer one-shot events, Channel(BUFFERED).receiveAsFlow() is the default because send suspends until consumed (the event is queued, never dropped), whereas SharedFlow(replay = 0) drops the emission if no collector is active at the instant of emission. Expose the Flow, never the Channel, and collect with collect inside LaunchedEffect — not collectAsStateWithLifecycle, which retains the last event as state and re-fires it on every recomposition / config change.

private val _events = Channel<UiEvent>(Channel.BUFFERED)
val events: Flow<UiEvent> = _events.receiveAsFlow()

// in the UI
LaunchedEffect(Unit) {
    viewModel.events.collect { event -> /* navigate / snackbar — consumed once */ }
}

Exactly-once is really at-most-once-with-very-high-probability. A receiveAsFlow() collector cancelled after receive() succeeds but before its block processes the element loses that element. Rare (most cancellations land between receives), but for payment/persistence-critical signals, store the outcome in durable state (a pendingResult field on UiState, cleared by the UI after consumption) — see compose/references/state-management.md "Durable state + acknowledgement".

SharedFlow: launch { emit() } over tryEmit

Default to launch { _events.emit(e) } — it suspends until the collector is ready, so the effect is never silently lost. tryEmit() on a default MutableSharedFlow() (no buffer) silently drops when no subscriber is ready; adding extraBufferCapacity = 1 only moves the cliff (a second rapid emission while the buffer is full returns false and is dropped with no error). Use tryEmit only for miss-tolerable effects (tooltip, sound).

Exposing a read-only flow — explicit backing fields (Kotlin 2.4+)

The _x (mutable) / x (read-only) two-property idiom collapses into a single property with explicit backing fields — stable in Kotlin 2.4, experimental in 2.3:

val uiState: StateFlow<UiState>
    field = MutableStateFlow(UiState())   // inside the class: uiState.update { … }; callers see StateFlow

Applies wherever a StateFlow / SharedFlow is exposed from a mutable backing (MutableStateFlow is a StateFlow, so the default getter type-checks). It does not fit a Channel exposed as a Flow — a Channel isn't a Flow, so keep the explicit _events / receiveAsFlow() pair above. On Kotlin < 2.4 (check the version catalog), keep the classic private val _x + val x = _x.asStateFlow().

Callback bridging

// Single value: suspendCancellableCoroutine — always prefer it (propagates cancellation)
suspend fun authenticate(token: String): User = suspendCancellableCoroutine { cont ->
    val call = authApi.authenticate(token) { user, error ->
        if (user != null) cont.resume(user) else cont.resumeWithException(error ?: Exception())
    }
    cont.invokeOnCancellation { call.cancel() }
}
// suspendCoroutine only when the API has no cancellation concept at all.

// Stream: callbackFlow — awaitClose is MANDATORY (omitting it leaks the callback and never completes)
fun LocationManager.locationUpdates(provider: String): Flow<Location> = callbackFlow {
    val listener = LocationListener { trySend(it) }
    requestLocationUpdates(provider, 1000L, 0f, listener)
    awaitClose { removeUpdates(listener) }
}

For a third-party SDK with no deregistration API, set a flag inside awaitClose to signal shutdown and document the limitation.

retry / retryWhen — always guard the attempt count

repository.getItems()
    .retryWhen { cause, attempt ->
        if (cause is IOException && attempt < 3) { delay((attempt + 1) * 1_000L); true } else false
    }
    .collect { ... }

attempt is the 0-based retry index. Without the attempt < count check the flow retries forever on a persistent error. (retry(3) { it is IOException } is the simple form.)

Error handling — .catch scope and the cancellation trap

.catch intercepts upstream errors only (not exceptions thrown inside collect {}), and — unlike try/catch — it does not swallow CancellationException. So prefer the operator form, and for collector-side work catch specific types.

// ✓ upstream errors, cancellation-safe
repository.getItems().onEach { process(it) }.catch { logger.error(it) }.collect()

// ✗ catch (e: Exception) inside collect/any suspend fn swallows CancellationException and breaks
//   structured concurrency — the single most common coroutine bug.
//   If a broad catch is unavoidable: if (e is CancellationException) throw e  // before handling

Side effects belong outside combine/map transforms

Transform lambdas are pure and re-execute on every upstream emission and every resubscription (e.g. rotation with WhileSubscribed). A viewModelScope.launch {} or event emission inside one fires repeatedly. Move it to onEach after the transform:

combine(userFlow, settingsFlow) { user, settings -> UiState(user, settings) }
    .onEach { analytics.logView(it.user.id) }   // not inside combine
    .stateIn(viewModelScope, SharingStarted.WhileSubscribed(5_000), UiState.Empty)

combine waits for every input to emit at least once before its first emission. If one input is a cold flow that never emits, the combined flow never emits — the classic "screen stuck on Loading" bug. Make each input a StateFlow, give cold inputs onStart { emit(initial) }, or sentinel-prefix them. (combine(a, b) { (x, y) -> … } destructuring doesn't compile.)

KMP

Expose Flow from shared code; collect per-platform (iOS: SKIE or a CoroutineScope wrapper). Avoid reading StateFlow.value from non-coroutine iOS contexts — use a collection wrapper.

Testing

Flow testing lives in android-skills:android-testing — read the two-schedulers trap (runTest + MainDispatcherRule must share one scheduler) before asserting on hot flows.