Android LiveData and JetPack Compose: Live Data not updating when observed

Question

The setContent in the Observer is not being executed after being attached to the liveData. So I'm just getting a blank activity. What's going on here? It seems to work in another activity with a similar pattern.

class TeamBuilderActivity : ComponentActivity() {

override fun onCreate(savedInstanceState: Bundle?) {
    super.onCreate(savedInstanceState)
    
    val imageIds = listOf(
        R.mipmap.goblin_smiling_background,
        R.mipmap.marker_goblin_axe_foreground,
        R.mipmap.beholder_foreground,
        R.mipmap.d20_background,
        R.mipmap.marker_goblin_axe_foreground,
        R.mipmap.goblin_smiling_foreground
    )

    val monsters = listOf(
        GoblinoidFactory.Bugbear(), GoblinoidFactory.Goblin(), KoboldFactory.Kobold()
    )
    val viewModel = ViewModelProvider(this).get(TeamBuilderActivityViewModel::class.java)
    val liveData = viewModel.getLiveData()

    liveData.observe(this, Observer {  
        setContent {
            Column {
                Card {

                    Column(Modifier.padding(5.dp)) {
                        TeamBuilderComposables.ImageSlider(
                            imageIds = imageIds,
                            onClicked = viewModel::onClickImage
                        )

                        TeamBuilderComposables.RandomNameRoller(
                            inputStream = resources.openRawResource(R.raw.nicknames),
                            onClicked = viewModel::setName
                        )

                        TeamBuilderComposables.StatBlockChooser(
                            monsters = monsters,
                            onClicked = viewModel::onClickMonsterStatBlock
                        )
                    }
                }

                TeamBuilderComposables.CharacterInfo(
                    imageId = it.selectedImageId,
                    monster = it.selectedMonster,
                    name = it.selectedName
                )
            }
        }
    })
}

}

Answer 1

OK … I found that the best way to handle this is to turn the live data into a state object inside the compose block with:

val viewState = liveData.observeAsState()