Compose creating new ViewModel instance

Question

I work in a project that's slowly adopting Jetpack Compose. It's mostly a single Activity multiple Fragments app where we use the Android's navigation component to handle transitions to each screen (Fragment). Whenever we can, we are only replacing the Fragments' XML layout with Composables.

The cases up until now were handling like the following:

A. Fragments show composables and handle navigation:

class ScreenFragment : Fragment() {

    // For observing events that trigger navigation
    private val viewModel by lazyViewModel { ScreenViewModel() }

    override fun onCreateView( ... ): View {
        return ComposeView(requireContext()).apply {

            setViewCompositionStrategy(DisposeOnLifecycleDestroyed(viewLifecycleOwner))

            setContent {
                AppTheme {
                    Screen(onBackPressed = { findNavController().navigateUp() })
                }
            }
        }
    }    
    ...

}

B. Composable that handles everything else UI related:

@Composable
fun CreatePassword(
    onBackPressed: () -> Unit,
) {

    // For observing UI states and events
    val viewModel: CreatePasswordViewModel = viewModel()
    ...
}

As you can see, we have a reference for the screen's ViewModel in both our Fragments and our Composables. Up until now, this has been working fine, the composable viewModel() function was always returning the same existing instance of the Fragment's ViewModel.

The problems came when we needed the reference of a ViewModel scoped to an Activity on the composable:

1. We create the ViewModel on the Activity:

class MainActivity : AppCompatActivity() {

    private val viewModel by lazyViewModel { MainViewModel() }
    ...
}

2. Get a reference for the MainActivity's ViewModel on the Fragment like

class MainFragment : Fragment() {

    private val viewModel: MainViewModel by viewModels(::requireActivity)
    ...
}

3. We get the reference of the ViewModel for composables as shown above (item B)

By doing so the Fragment has the same instance of the Activity's but the composable doesn't.

My questions is, would it be possible to get the reference of the Activity's ViewModel inside the composable? For now I'm simply passing down the Fragment's ViewModel as a parameter to my main composable screen.

Answer 1

I managed to pass down the Activity's ViewModel by providing a ViewModelStoreOwner to my composable as following:

class ScreenFragment : Fragment() {

    // For observing events that trigger navigation
    private val viewModel by lazyViewModel { ScreenViewModel() }

    override fun onCreateView( ... ): View {
        return ComposeView(requireContext()).apply {

            setViewCompositionStrategy(DisposeOnLifecycleDestroyed(viewLifecycleOwner))

            setContent {
                val viewModelStoreOwner =
                    compositionLocalOf<ViewModelStoreOwner> { requireActivity() }
    
                AppTheme {
                    CompositionLocalProvider(
                        LocalViewModelStoreOwner provides viewModelStoreOwner.current
                    ) {
                        Screen(onBackPressed = { findNavController().navigateUp() })
                    }
                }
            }
        }
    }    
    ...

}