Book Image

Simplifying Application Development with Kotlin Multiplatform Mobile

By : Róbert Nagy
Book Image

Simplifying Application Development with Kotlin Multiplatform Mobile

By: Róbert Nagy

Overview of this book

Sharing code between platforms can help developers gain a competitive edge, and Kotlin Multiplatform Mobile (KMM) offers a sensible way to do it. KMM helps mobile teams share code between Android and iOS in a flexible way, leaving room for native development. The book begins by helping you to gain a clear understanding of the Kotlin Multiplatform approach, how it works, and how it is different from cross-platform technologies, such as React Native and Flutter, and code sharing options, such as C++. You'll then see how your team can use this software development kit (SDK) to build native applications more effectively by learning timeless concepts and working through practical examples. As you advance, you'll get to grips with the core concepts, understand why UI sharing fails, and get hands-on with developing a small KMM application. Finally, you'll discover expert tips and best practices, along with production- and adoption-related questions, that will help you take the next step in your project and career. By the end of this Kotlin book, you'll have gained a solid understanding of the capabilities of KMM and be able to share code between Android and iOS flexibly.
Table of Contents (15 chapters)
1
Section 1 - Getting Started with Multiplatform Mobile Development Using Kotlin
5
Section 2 - Code Sharing between Android and iOS
10
Section 3 - Supercharging Yourself for the Next Steps

Architectural decisions

There is a wide range of opinions regarding which architecture is the most suitable for traditional apps; there is no one size fits all decision. As we've already experienced, KMP gives you a lot of flexibility in how you plan on organizing your shared code.

Certain things will be influenced by KMP and probably move you in a certain direction (such as choosing fakes over mocks). Before we dive into these constraints, I want to emphasize one key benefit of shared code and KMP. In Chapter 1, The Battle Between Native, Cross-Platform, and Multiplatform, we discussed the costs of keeping Android and iOS in sync. While there are best practices to limit working in silos, enforcing a shared architecture is one of the things that teams find to be one of the immediately evident benefits of KMP as it becomes easier to communicate between teams.

Thus, I'd say that an ideal architecture in KMP would be "one that accomplishes sharing the most of the...