Mobius onboarding Guide

Mobius

Mobius is our recommended architecture for building Android applications. We also feel that it is much easier to learn Test-Driven Development by starting out to build apps using Mobius.

Day 1: Introduction to Mobius & TDD (4:50 hours)

  • Theory: Introduction to Mobius (1 hour)

    • Eliminating the moving parts using functional programming

    • Pure functions

    • State transition diagrams

    • Model & Event

  • Pairing Activity: The counter app state transition diagram (1 hour)

    • The update() function

    • Introducing the UpdateSpec class

    • Test driving the counter update() function

    • Wiring the update() function to the UI

  • Theory: Test-Driven Development (30 minutes)

    • Principles of TDD

    • The red, green, and refactor cycle

    • TDD as a design practice

Day 2: Mobius Effects & Effect Handlers (5:05 hours)

  • Reflection of Day 1 and discussion around reading materials (30 minutes)

  • Pairing Activity: Login Screen update() Exercise (2 hours)

    • Introducing effects & effect handlers

    • Login example state transition diagram

    • Test driving the login update() function

    • Identifying the primitive obsession code smell (Watch this)

    • The “What to test?” problem

    • Relationship between the number of execution paths and tests

    • Test driving the Username and Password classes

    • Modeling async state transitions

    • Completing the update() function

  • Pairing Activity: Materializing effects using effect handlers (1:30 hours)

    • State verification vs. behavior verification

    • Introduction to Mockito

    • Low confidence behavior verification tests

    • Writing the first effect handler

    • Using the RxJava SubtypeEffectHandler

    • Action, Consumer, and ObservableTransformer

    • Errors of first-class citizens

    • Using Scheduler in tests

  • Pairing Activity: Introduction to Views and View Renderers (45 minutes)

    • Using mockito to verify view rendering logic

  • Recap (20 minutes)

    • Key takeaways

Day 3: Mobius, the final bits (5:35 hours)

  • Reflection of Day 2 (30 minutes)

  • Pairing Activity: Creating the shell (45 minutes)

    • Wiring all the Mobius components

    • Saving and restoring model state

    • The @Parcelize annotation

    • Caveats of saving data using Android’s Parcelable interface

  • Pairing Activity: Subtle bugs introduced by async operations (45 minutes)

    • Handling normal flow of execution using the init() function

    • Handling edge cases using the init() function

    • Using the InitSpec for testing normal flow and edge cases

  • Recap (20 minutes)

Day 4, 5, and (possibly 6): Building the NASA APOD Apps (14:50 - 22:50 hours)

  • Reflection of Day 3 (20 minutes)

  • Individual Activity: NASA APOD Application (8 - 16 hours)

    • Step 1: Drawing the state transition diagram

    • Step 2: Writing the init()the update() tests

    • Step 3: Writing Effect Handler tests

    • Step 4: View and View Renderer Tests

    • Step 5: Wire up the imperative shell

  • Code review and addressal (1:30 hours)

  • Recap (1 hour)

Points of Confusion

  • Effect are more closer to intention for side-effect than performing a side-effect

  • Representing decision making in state diagram

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