How to Pass an Object to a Fragment in Android

There are many ways to pass an object to a fragment. A serializable class is often used.

In this post, I want to show you my way to carry out this task. My method is just simply converting an object to a String and then bundling it.

Gson library is required to convert objects into JSON strings and vice versa. It is a Java serialization/deserialization library that can convert Java Objects into JSON and back. Gson can be downloaded here.

Install the library:

implementation 'com.google.code.gson:gson:2.8.6'

Pass an object:

val product = Product(id=1, name="HP Printer", price=1000f)
val productString = Gson().toJson(product)
ProductEditFragment.newInstance(productString)

Receive the product and deserialize it:

This part is for newInstance of ProductEditFragment.

companion object {
    fun newInstance(productString: String) =
        ProductEditFragment().apply {
            arguments = Bundle().apply {                
                putString("productString", productString)
            }
        }
}

In fragment’s onCreate:

arguments?.let {    
    productString = it.getString("productString")!!
}
val product = Gson().fromJson(productString, Product::class.java)