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

Introduction to data classes

Data classes are intended for types that are meant to be data containers and nothing more. Code readability is important to me and, most likely, to anyone who reads this book. When you open a source file, you really want to be able to quickly grasp what the code does. When it comes to a POJO (short for Plain Old Java Object), I am sure you would very much like to avoid having to write the code for setters and getters if all they do is return a value. Furthermore, the constructor's code body is bold in almost every case; it just takes the incoming parameters and assigns them to the concerned fields after it performs any validation that is required. This is where data classes could help you. If you have coded in Scala, you will already be accustomed to the case-class construct, and I am pretty sure the idea of even having to press a shortcut key...