data binding - Android : Difference between DataBinding and ViewBinding

Question

We are using DataBinding since Jetpack release. Android documentation indicates that ViewBinding was added in Android Studio 3.6 Canary 11+.

I read the documentation but its looks similar to DataBinding.

Can anyone explain what's the difference between these two concepts?

Answer 1

According to the official docs:

ViewBinding

Only binding views to code.

DataBinding

Binding data (from code) to views + ViewBinding (Binding views to code)

There are three important differences

1. With view binding, the layouts do not need a layout tag

2. You can't use viewbinding to bind layouts with data in xml (No binding expressions, no BindingAdapters nor two-way binding with viewbinding)

3. The main advantages of viewbinding are speed and efficiency. It has a shorter build time because it avoids the overhead and performance issues associated with databinding due to annotation processors affecting databinding's build time.

In short, there is nothing viewbinding can do that databinding cannot do (though at cost of longer build times) and there are a lot databinding can do that viewbinding can"t