37.1 Understanding ViewModel State Saving

As outlined in the previous chapters, the ViewModel brings many benefits to app development, including UI state restoration in the event of configuration changes such as a device rotation. To see this in action, run the ViewModelDemo app (or if you have not yet created the project, load into Android Studio the ViewModelDemo_LiveData project from the sample code download that accompanies the book).

Once running, enter a dollar value and convert it to euros. With both the dollar and euro values displayed, rotate the device or emulator and note that, once the app has responded to the orientation change, both values are still visible.

Unfortunately, this behavior does not extend to the termination of a background app process. With the app still running, tap the device home button to place the ViewModelDemo app into the background, then terminate it by opening the Logcat tool window in Android Studio and clicking on the terminate button as...