Custom Screens

In a normal Android app, you would create a new Activity for a new screen. However, extensions cannot dynamically register Activities in the app's AndroidManifest.xml, which is required to launch extensions. To solve this, Xed-Editor provides two APIs:

• ExtensionScreen and
• MainRouteRegistry

What is an ExtensionScreen?

An ExtensionScreen works almost exactly like an Activity. It has a lifecycle (onCreate, onStart, etc.) and allows you to set Compose content. Xed-Editor hosts these screens inside a special internal Activity.

Creating a Screen

To create a new screen, extend the ExtensionScreen class:

class MyCustomScreen : ExtensionScreen() {
    override fun onCreate(savedInstanceState: Bundle?) {
        setContent {
            // Your Compose UI here
            Column {
                Text("Welcome to my custom screen!")
                Button(onClick = { finish() }) {
                    Text("Go back")
                }
            }
        }
    }
}

Starting a Screen

You can start your new screen from anywhere using the ExtensionContext:

context.startScreen(MyCustomScreen())

Main Routes

An alternative to creating screens is to create a custom main route with MainRouteRegistry.

The advantage is that this user interface is rendered within the standard MainActivity, meaning no new external activity is opened. However, the disadvantage is that this screen must be manually unregistered via MainRouteRegistry.unregisterRoute(...) and may be less flexible than a custom screen.

The registration is similar to the settings routes:

val route = DynamicRoute(
    route = "my_feature_route",
    arguments = emptyList(),
    content = { navController, backStackEntry ->
        // This is where your screen content goes
        MyScreenUI()
    }
)

MainRouteRegistry.registerRoute(route)

You can go to your new route by using the corresponding NavHostController:

mainNavController.navigate("my_feature_route")