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

Higher-order functions

A higher-order function is a function that either accepts another function as a parameter, returns a function as its return value, or both.

Let's consider the first example:

    fun foo(str: String, fn: (String) -> String): Unit { 
      val applied = fn(str) 
      println(applied) 
    } 

Here, we have defined a foo function with two parameters. The first is a string, and the second is a function from string to string. When we say from string to string, we mean the function accepts a string input and returns another string as the output. Also, note the syntax used to define the function parameter. The input types are wrapped in parentheses, and the output type is separated by a thin arrow.

To invoke this function, we can pass in a function literal (function literals were introduced in Chapter 4, Functions in Kotlin):

    foo("hello",...