android - How to handle error states with LiveData?

Question

The new LiveData can be used as a replacement for RxJava's observables in some scenarios. However, unlike Observable, LiveData has no callback for errors.

My question is: How should I handle errors in LiveData, e.g. when it's backed by some network resource that can fail to be retrieved due to an IOException?

Answer 1

In one of Google's sample apps for Android Architecture Components they wrap the LiveData emitted object in a class that can contain a status, data, and message for the emitted object.

https://github.com/googlesamples/android-architecture-components/blob/master/GithubBrowserSample/app/src/main/java/com/android/example/github/vo/Resource.kt

With this approach you can use the status to determine if there was an error.