Book Image

Programming Kotlin

Book Image

Programming Kotlin

Overview of this book

Quickly learn the fundamentals of the Kotlin language and see it in action on the web. Easy to follow and covering the full set of programming features, this book will get you fluent in Kotlin for Android.
Table of Contents (20 chapters)
Programming Kotlin
Credits
About the Authors
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Customer Feedback
Preface

Data class definition rules


If any of the methods that were just presented are present in your class already, the compiler won't overwrite them with its own version. You can, therefore, take full control if the requirements are as such. When you define a data class, you need to follow the following rules:

  • The primary constructor needs to have at least one parameter

  • All primary constructor parameters need to be marked as val or var

  • Data classes cannot be abstract, open, sealed, or inner

  • Data classes cannot extend other classes (but may implement interfaces)

Many Java frameworks require your class to provide a default parameter less constructor. Imagine you are writing an e-mail application and you model the Email type like this (is the way it is for the sake of simplicity):

data class Email(var to:String = "",
                 var subject:String= "",
                 var content:String= "")

The key to having the empty constructor option is to provide a default value for each parameter...