Unresolved Reference layoutInflater Android View Binding

Question

I'm trying to convert one of my former "kotlin-android-extensions" activities to View Binding. Every example I've seen of this seems to contain some variant of the line:

binding = MyActivityBiding.inflate(layoutInflater)

Yet when I attempt to use layoutInflater I get the error:

Unresolved reference: layoutInflater

I understand it appears to be a variable from Layoutinflater... but no one ever seems to need to define it in any of the examples I've found. And when I attempt to define "layoutInflater" myself using LayoutInflater... I can never get the context from anywhere.

Anyway... here is my code:

open class ExpandableCommentIndie   constructor(
        private val comment : Comment,
        private val depth : Int) : Item<GroupieViewHolder>(), ExpandableItem {

    private lateinit var expandableGroup: ExpandableGroup
    private lateinit var binding: ItemEcBinding




    override fun bind(viewHolder: GroupieViewHolder, position: Int) {
        addingDepthViews(viewHolder)
        binding = ItemEcBinding.inflate(layoutInflater)
        binding.tvUser.setText(comment.speaker.toString())
    }

Answer 1

All you need to get a LayoutInflater is a Context which is somehow related to a UI component. So Activity (which is a kind of Context), Fragment.context and View.context will do.

Since GroupieViewHolder extends RecyclerView.ViewHolder, it has a property itemView: View. So you can get the LayoutInflater as follows:

val layoutInflater = LayoutInflater.from(viewHolder.itemView.context)

The whole function:

override fun bind(viewHolder: GroupieViewHolder, position: Int) {
    addingDepthViews(viewHolder)
    val layoutInflater = LayoutInflater.from(viewHolder.itemView.context)
    binding = ItemEcBinding.inflate(layoutInflater)
    binding.tvUser.setText(comment.speaker.toString())
}