Scoping a viewmodel to multiple fragments (not activity) using the navigation component

Yes, it's possible to scope a viewmodel to a navgraph now starting with androidx.navigation:*:2.1.0-alpha02. See the release notes here and an example of the API here. All you need to give is the R.id for your navgraph. I find it a bit annoying to use, though, because normally viewmodels are initialized in onCreate, which isn't possible with this scope because the nav controller isn't guaranteed to be set by your nav host fragment yet (I'm finding this is the case with configuration changes).

Also, if you don't want your mainFragment to be part of that scope, I would suggest taking it out and maybe using a nested nav graph.

Here's a concrete example of Alex H's accepted answer.

In your build.gradle (app)

dependencies {
    def nav_version = "2.1.0"
    implementation "androidx.navigation:navigation-fragment-ktx:$nav_version"
}

Example of view model

class MyViewModel : ViewModel() { 
    val name: MutableLiveData<String> = MutableLiveData()
}

In your FirstFlowFragment.kt define

val myViewModel: MyViewModel by navGraphViewModels(R.id.your_nested_nav_id)
myViewModel.name.value = "Cool Name"

And in your SecondFlowFragment.kt define

val myViewModel: MyViewModel by navGraphViewModels(R.id.your_nested_nav_id)
val name = myViewModel.name.value.orEmpty()
Log.d("tag", "welcome $name!")

Now the ViewModel is scoped in this nested fragment, shared state will be destroyed when nested nav is destroyed as well, no need to manually reset them.

so when i posted this the functionality was there but didn't quite work as expected, since then i now use this all the time and this question keeps getting more attention so thought i would post an up to date example,

using

//Navigation
implementation "androidx.navigation:navigation-fragment:2.2.0-rc04"
// Navigation UI
implementation "androidx.navigation:navigation-ui:2.2.0-rc04"

i get the view model store owner like this

private ViewModelStoreOwner getStoreOwner() {

        NavController navController = Navigation
                .findNavController(requireActivity(), R.id.root_navigator_fragment);
        return navController.getViewModelStoreOwner(R.id.root_navigator);
}

im using the one activity multiple fragments implementation, but using this i can effectively tie my view models to just the scoped fragments and with the new live data you can even limit that too

the first id comes from the nav graphs fragment

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
  <FrameLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    android:layout_width="match_parent"
    android:layout_height="match_parent"
    xmlns:app="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res-auto">

    <fragment
      android:id="@+id/root_navigator_fragment"
      android:layout_width="match_parent"
      android:layout_height="match_parent"
      android:name="androidx.navigation.fragment.NavHostFragment"
      app:defaultNavHost="true"
      app:navGraph="@navigation/root_navigator"/>

  </FrameLayout>

and the second comes from the id of the nav graph

  <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
  <navigation xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    xmlns:app="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res-auto"
    xmlns:tools="http://schemas.android.com/tools"
    android:id="@+id/root_navigator"
    app:startDestination="@id/mainNavFragment">

and then you can use it like so

private void setUpSearchViewModel() {
    searchViewModel = new ViewModelProvider(getStoreOwner()).get(SearchViewModel.class);
}