So, I am new to Android development and no-one else seems to have this problem, so I guess I am doing something fundamentally wrong...

I have a table in a Room DB where I want to store metadata of little stories, among other things also the resource ID of an image:

@Entity(tableName = "stories")
data class Story(
    @PrimaryKey val id: Int,
    @StringRes val title: Int,
    @DrawableRes val imageId: Int,
    ...
)

Then I have the ViewModel for the screen where I want to show the image:

class StoryImageViewModel(
    savedStateHandle: SavedStateHandle,
    storyRepository: StoryRepository
): ViewModel() {

    private val storyId: Int = checkNotNull(savedStateHandle[StoryImageDestination.storyIdArg])

    val storyImageUiState: StateFlow<StoryImageUiState> =
                storyRepository.getStoryStream(storyId)
                    .filterNotNull()
                    .map { StoryImageUiState(it) }
                    .stateIn(
                        scope = viewModelScope,
                        started = SharingStarted.WhileSubscribed(TIMEOUT_MILLIS),
                        initialValue = StoryImageUiState()
                    )

    companion object {
        private const val TIMEOUT_MILLIS = 5_000L
    }
}

data class StoryImageUiState(
    val story: Story = FakeData.dummyStory
)

I use a DAO and a repository to read the story details. This all works nicely for other screens and other kinds of data, but then I want to read the image ID to display the image in the screen for it:

object StoryImageDestination : NavigationDestination {
    override val route = "StoryImage"
    const val storyIdArg = "storyId"
    val routeWithArgs = "$route/{$storyIdArg}"
}

@Composable
fun StoryImageScreen(
    navigateBack:() -> Unit,
    viewModel: StoryImageViewModel = viewModel(factory = AppViewModelProvider.Factory),
    modifier: Modifier = Modifier
) {
    val uiState by viewModel.storyImageUiState.collectAsState()
    val story = uiState.story
    Log.d(TAG, "story title: ${stringResource(story.title)}")
    Log.d(TAG, "story imageId: " + story.imageId)

    Scaffold(
        ...
    ) { innerPadding ->
        Image(
            painter = painterResource(story.imageId),
            contentDescription = stringResource(story.title),
            modifier = Modifier.padding(innerPadding)
        )
    }
}

Now comes the weird part: When I run the code above, the app crashes with an 'Invalid resource ID 0x00000000' error in the line where the painterResource is called. And in the logs I see that neither title nor image ID are set, so the error makes sense.

However, when I remove the painterResource call, I see in the log output that story title and imageId are set correctly.

So, does that mean that the painterResource tries to access the image resource ID before it is populated in the view model? If so, how do I avoid this?

If not: What is the problem here?