Book Image

Android Development with Kotlin

By : Igor Wojda, Marcin Moskala
Book Image

Android Development with Kotlin

By: Igor Wojda, Marcin Moskala

Overview of this book

Nowadays, improved application development does not just mean building better performing applications. It has become crucial to find improved ways of writing code. Kotlin is a language that helps developers build amazing Android applications easily and effectively. This book discusses Kotlin features in context of Android development. It demonstrates how common examples that are typical for Android development, can be simplified using Kotlin. It also shows all the benefits, improvements and new possibilities provided by this language. The book is divided in three modules that show the power of Kotlin and teach you how to use it properly. Each module present features in different levels of advancement. The first module covers Kotlin basics. This module will lay a firm foundation for the rest of the chapters so you are able to read and understand most of the Kotlin code. The next module dives deeper into the building blocks of Kotlin, such as functions, classes, and function types. You will learn how Kotlin brings many improvements to the table by improving common Java concepts and decreasing code verbosity. The last module presents features that are not present in Java. You will learn how certain tasks can be achieved in simpler ways thanks to Kotlin. Through the book, you will learn how to use Kotlin for Android development. You will get to know and understand most important Kotlin features, and how they can be used. You will be ready to start your own adventure with Android development with Kotlin.
Table of Contents (16 chapters)
Title Page
Credits
About the Authors
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Customer Feedback
Preface
9
Making Your Marvel Gallery Application

Top-level functions under the hood


With Android projects, Kotlin is compiled to Java bytecode that runs on Dalvik Virtual Machine (before Android 5.0) or Android Runtime (Android 5.0 and newer). Both virtual machines can execute only the code that is defined inside a class. To solve this problem, the Kotlin compiler generates classes for top-level functions. The class name is constructed from the file name and the Kt suffix. Inside such a class, all functions and properties are static. For example, let's suppose that we define a function within the Printer.kt file:

    // Printer.kt 
    fun printTwo() { 
        print(2) 
    } 

Kotlin code is compiled into Java bytecode. The generated bytecode will be analogical to the code generated from the following Java class:

    //Java 
    public final class PrinterKt { // 1 
        public static void printTwo() { // 2 
            System.out.print(2); // 3 
        } 
    } 
  1. PrinterKt is the name made from the name of the file and the Kt suffix.
  1. All...