Android Navigation Component is a part of the Android Jetpack library that simplifies the implementation of navigation in Android applications. It provides a framework for navigating between different screens or destinations within an application.

Benefits of using Navigation Component

• Simplifies navigation code
• Provides a visual editor to design navigation graph
• Ensures type safety and compile-time checks
• Supports deep linking
• Handles fragment transactions automatically

How to use Navigation Component in Kotlin code

To use Navigation Component in a Kotlin-based Android app, you need to add the Navigation dependency in the app-level build.gradle file.

dependencies {
    def nav_version = "2.3.5"
    implementation "androidx.navigation:navigation-fragment-ktx:$nav_version"
    implementation "androidx.navigation:navigation-ui-ktx:$nav_version"
}

After adding the dependency, you can create a navigation graph file in the res/navigation directory. The navigation graph file defines the different destinations and the routes between them.

You can then define a NavHostFragment in your activity layout file. The NavHostFragment acts as a container for the fragments that will be navigated to.

<fragment
    android:id="@+id/nav_host_fragment"
    android:name="androidx.navigation.fragment.NavHostFragment"
    android:layout_width="match_parent"
    android:layout_height="match_parent"
    app:defaultNavHost="true"
    app:navGraph="@navigation/nav_graph" />

To navigate to a destination, you can use the NavController class to get the instance of the NavHostFragment and call the navigate() method with the destination ID.

val navController = findNavController(R.id.nav_host_fragment)
navController.navigate(R.id.destination_id)

Conclusion

Navigation Component simplifies the implementation of navigation in Android applications by providing a framework for navigating between different screens or destinations within an application. With the help of Navigation Component, developers can easily manage navigation and reduce boilerplate code.