Book Image

Learn Kotlin Programming - Second Edition

By : Stephen Samuel, Stefan Bocutiu
Book Image

Learn Kotlin Programming - Second Edition

By: Stephen Samuel, Stefan Bocutiu

Overview of this book

Kotlin is a general-purpose programming language used for developing cross-platform applications. Complete with a comprehensive introduction and projects covering the full set of Kotlin programming features, this book will take you through the fundamentals of Kotlin and get you up to speed in no time. Learn Kotlin Programming covers the installation, tools, and how to write basic programs in Kotlin. You'll learn how to implement object-oriented programming in Kotlin and easily reuse your program or parts of it. The book explains DSL construction, serialization, null safety aspects, and type parameterization to help you build robust apps. You'll learn how to destructure expressions and write your own. You'll then get to grips with building scalable apps by exploring advanced topics such as testing, concurrency, microservices, coroutines, and Kotlin DSL builders. Furthermore, you'll be introduced to the kotlinx.serialization framework, which is used to persist objects in JSON, Protobuf, and other formats. By the end of this book, you'll be well versed with all the new features in Kotlin and will be able to build robust applications skillfully.
Table of Contents (21 chapters)
Free Chapter
1
Section 1: Fundamental Concepts in Kotlin
5
Section 2: Practical Concepts in Kotlin
15
Section 3: Advanced Concepts in Kotlin

Parameterized types

It is not just functions that can be parameterized; types themselves can also be parameterized. Such types are sometimes referred to as container types because of the close association with collections, and the fact that they contain one or more type parameters.

To declare a parameterized type, we again use the angle bracket syntax; this time on the right-hand side of the type name. For example, to declare a Sequence class of a T element, we would write the following:

    class Sequence<T> 

Again, we can declare more than one type parameter:

    class Dictionary<K, V> 
The most commonly used parameterized types are collections, and these are covered in more detail in Chapter 10, Collections.

When a type has been declared with a type parameter, we must "fill in" that type when we instantiate it by replacing the parameters with concrete...