DevNexus 2018 – Bulletproofing your foot for Kotlin

Title: Bulletproofing your foot for Kotlin
Speakers: Enrique Zamudio

Slides (from the Devoxx version of this talk)

For more blog posts, see the DevNexus 2018 live blogging table of contents


About Kotlin

  • Created by JetBrains (makers of IntelliJ)
  • Static typing
  • JVM language
  • Can run on front end or back end
  • Good for Android

Data classes

data class Person(val name:String val birthDate:Date)
  • No need to write getters/setters.
  • toString() and equals() automatically added.
  • However hashCode() is not automatically added.

Destructuring

val p = Person("John", now)
val (n, f) = p
  • Like Scala
  • Stores each field in a variable
  • Similarly can do for ((k,v) in map) when iterating through a map

Functions

fun foo() {}

Takes no params, calls a function and returns Unit (void)

fun bar(f:() -> (Unit)) = f())

Method reference like in Java. Since a top level function, nothing before the ::

bar(::foo)

Passing a lambda directly to a function:

bar ( { println() })

Runs on Java 7

String interpolation

println "Name: $n"

Works like in Groovy

Type inference

Immutable (final) String:

val p = "hello"

Mutable:

var q = "hi"

Recommend specifying type for method so faster.

Smart casts

 val p:Any = "string"
if p is String) {
  println(p.toUppercase())
}
  • Any is a root class
  • Once you check the type, you can use it rather than having to cast.
  • Can still write explicit cast println((p as String).toUpperCase()). Stupid cast?

Typesafe null

var p:String? = "hello"
p = null
if (p != null) {foo(x)}
  • Want to catch errors at compile time
  • If just write var, can’t assign null.
  • Have to explicitly say it is ok by making it an “optional string”
  • Cannot pass an optional string to a method that takes a regular string [cool!]
  • Write guard to check if not null. That is a smart cast to turn String? into String so can call method that takes String
  • ?. returns null if it is null vs a runtime exception. So safe way is to write s?.length
  • The elvis operator ?: from Groovy is also supported.
  • BEWARE: There’s also a kill switch. Writing foo(p!!) you are forcing Kotlin to pass the String? into String without the check. It is a way to say you know what you are doing. Then you get a runtime error if it is null instead of a compiler error.

Operator overloading

class Foo(val x:Int) {
  operator fun plus(o:Foo) = Foo(o.x=x)
}
  • Can only overload simple operators – math operators and index (square square brackets)
  • BEWARE: only way to tell if can use overloading is to look at the class code (or release notes). It’s not in the docs.

Extension methods

fun Person.debug() { println("") {
  • Can add methods to a class even if don’t have the source code.
  • BEWARE: don’t use extension operators. Someone looking at the class won’t know they are there. Not obvious where to look for the code.

Non local returns

  • BEWARE: do not use.
  • Allows writing a return within a closure. In Groovy, it would return from the closure. In Kotlin, it returns from the whole method.
  • Can write return@forEach to return from just the closure. But yech.

My take

This was my first exposure to Kotlin. Some of the features are really cool!

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