How to make EditText observe a ViewModel's LiveData and forward user input to the ViewModel without using data binding

I also ran into this problem since I don't like the databinding library. I did as @kAliert said, but in my ViewModel to keep the logic there. I just added a simple catch on the function that receives my text changes events in the ViewModel. It works well.

fun editTextChanged(newText: String) {
    if (newText == textLiveData.value) {
        return
    }
}