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

Packages

Packages allow us to split classes and interfaces into separate namespaces. A package may contain any number of classes and interfaces. Any file may begin with a package declaration:

    package com.packt.myproject 
    class Foo 
    fun bar(): String = "bar" 

The package name is used to give us the fully qualified name (FQN) for a class, object, interface, or function. In the preceding example, the Foo class has the fully qualified name of com.packt.myproject.Foo, and the top-level bar function has the fully qualified name of com.packt.myproject.bar.

Kotlin differs from Java in that the directory structure does not have to match the package name. For example, in Java, a com.packt.Foo class must reside in a file such as ./com/packt/Foo.java. Kotlin does not have this restriction.