So I started learning Kotlin today and got to Classes when I noticed something weird.
When I run this code:
fun main() {
val dog_1 = Dog("Walrek", 7)
}
open class Animal(
open val type: String,
open val name: String,
open val speed: Int,
) {
init {
println("(Ani init) New animal: $type called $name with $speed speed")
}
}
class Dog(
override val name: String,
override val speed: Int,
): Animal("Dog", name, speed) {}
The init method will print out: (Ani init) New animal: Dog called null with 0 speed.
At first I thought I messed up somewhere and somehow I'm not passing the arguments properly into the Animal class, but then I added these two lines of code:
init {
println("(Dog init) New animal: $type called $name with $speed speed")
}
into Dog class, and
println(dog_1.name)
in the main function, and got this as an output:
(Ani init) New animal: Dog called null with 0 speed
(Dog init) New animal: Dog called Walrek with 7 speed
Walrek
So now my question is, why weren't the parameters passed into the Animal class, and yet I can access them as usual after creating the Dog instance?
You should be getting a compiler warning. You should never use open properties or functions at construction time (in init blocks or property declarations), because it causes this kind of unwanted behavior. It's just about the only way you can get a NullPointerException in Kotlin without using !!.
The reason it happens is that the superclass's constructor (which includes init blocks and property declarations) is run before the subclass. Since you override the property name in the subclass, the backing field of the property name has not yet been initialized by the time init of the superclass is called, so the property returns the default Java field value of null. In the case of speed, the field type is a Java primitive int so its default value is 0.
Note that in your specific example, there was no need to override these properties because you are passing these values to the superconstructor anyway. You could remove the open keyword before the properties and declare your Dog like:
class Dog(
name: String,
speed: Int,
): Animal("Dog", name, speed) {}
Then it will behave properly.
Related
I'm trying to access the delegate of the property (id) of a class (FooImpl). The problem is, this class implements an interface (Foo), and the property in question overrides a property of this interface. The delegate only exists in the class (not that it could exist in the interface).
The problem is that using the :: operator on a variable of type Foo always returns the property of Foo, not that of the actual instance. The problem in code:
import kotlin.reflect.KProperty
import kotlin.reflect.KProperty0
import kotlin.reflect.jvm.isAccessible
interface Foo {
val id: Int
}
class FooImpl(
id: Int,
) : Foo {
override val id: Int by lazy { id }
}
val <T> KProperty<T>.hasDelegate: Boolean
get() = apply { isAccessible = true }.let { (it as KProperty0<T>).getDelegate() != null }
fun main() {
val foo: Foo = FooImpl(1)
println("foo::id.hasDelegate = ${foo::id.hasDelegate}")
println("(foo as FooImpl)::id.hasDelegate = ${(foo as FooImpl)::id.hasDelegate}")
}
This prints:
foo::id.hasDelegate = false
(foo as FooImpl)::id.hasDelegate = true
But this requires compile-time knowledge of the correct implementation. What I'm looking for is accessing the correct propert without having to specify FooImpl there.
The information is present at runtime because the least (!) intrusive workaround I have found so far is adding fun idProp(): KProperty0<*> to Foo and override fun idProp() = ::id to FooImpl and accessing the property using that.
Is there any better way than that?
I came up with this, but I don't know if there's a better way. The problem to work around is that getDelegate() has to return an actual instance of the delegate, so you need an instance of the class to be able to retrieve a delegate instance. It would really be nice if there was a hasDelegate property built in. Your version of hasDelegate will crash from the cast on unbound KProperty1's, which is all we have to work with when the specific class is unknown.
So to retrieve the delegate instance, we need to do search the class instance's member properties by name, which gives us a KProperty with covariant class type of the super-class type. Since it's covariant, we can call a consuming function like getDelegate() without casting to the invariant type. I think this logically should be safe, since we are passing an instance that we know has the matching type for the ::class that we retrieved the property with.
#Suppress("UNCHECKED_CAST")
fun <T: Any> KProperty1<T, *>.isDelegated(instance: T): Boolean =
(instance::class.memberProperties.first { it.name == name } as KProperty1<T, *>).run {
isAccessible = true
getDelegate(instance) != null
}
fun main() {
val foo: Foo = Foo2()
println("foo::id.hasDelegate = ${Foo::id.isDelegated(foo)}")
}
The problem here is that the owner of the property is resolved on compile time, not on runtime. When you do foo::id then foo (so FooImpl) become its bound receiver, but owner is still resolved to Foo. To fix this we wound need to "cast" property to another owner. Unfortunately, I didn't find a straightforward way to do this.
One solution I found is to use foo::class instead of foo::id as it resolves KClass on runtime, not on compile time. Then I came up with almost exactly the same code as #Tenfour04.
But if you don't mind using Kotlin internals that are public and not protected with any annotation, you can use much cleaner solution:
val KProperty0<*>.hasDelegate: Boolean
get() = apply { isAccessible = true }.getDelegate() != null
fun KProperty0<*>.castToRuntimeType(): KProperty0<*> {
require(this is PropertyReference0)
return PropertyReference0Impl(boundReceiver, boundReceiver::class.java, name, signature, 0)
}
fun main() {
val foo: Foo = FooImpl(1)
println(foo::id.castToRuntimeType().hasDelegate) // true
}
We basically create a new instance of KProperty, copying all its data, but changing the owner to the same type as its bound receiver. As a result, we "cast" it to the runtime type. This is much simpler and it is also cleaner because we separated property casting and checking for a delegate.
Unfortunately, I think Kotlin reflection API is still missing a lot of features. There should be hasDelegate() function, so we don't have to provide receivers, which is not really needed to check if property is delegated. It should be possible to cast KProperty to another type. It should be possible to create bound properties with some API call. But first of all, it should be possible to do something like: Foo::id(foo), so create KProperty of the runtime type of foo. And so on.
Let's imagine that we have data class with two properties and we need secondary constructor for some reasons. Problem is that i need recalculate each argument in primary constructor call instead of using some cached value of raw.split("_"):
data class Id(
val arg1: String,
val arg2: String
) {
constructor(raw: String) : this(raw.split("_")[0], raw.split("_")[1])
}
I can do this in Java but how I can do this in Kotlin?
You can do it this way:
data class Id(
val arg1: String,
val arg2: String
) {
private constructor(splitted: List<String>) : this(splitted[0], splitted[1])
constructor(raw: String) : this(raw.split("_"))
}
It's a good and idiomatic way to solve your problem. Since all secondary constructors must delegate to primary constructor (data class always has it), you can't do what you want in constructor body. In Java it works because there are no primary constructors and no data classes at language level - in Kotlin you can do it like in Java too if you remove data modifier and move properties outside of constructor, but it's a really bad way.
I have started learning Kotlin. I would like to know the difference between init block and constructor.
What is the difference between this and how we can use this to improve?
class Person constructor(var name: String, var age: Int) {
var profession: String = "test"
init {
println("Test")
}
}
The init block will execute immediately after the primary constructor. Initializer blocks effectively become part of the primary constructor.
The constructor is the secondary constructor. Delegation to the primary constructor happens as the first statement of a secondary constructor, so the code in all initializer blocks is executed before the secondary constructor body.
Example
class Sample(private var s : String) {
init {
s += "B"
}
constructor(t: String, u: String) : this(t) {
this.s += u
}
}
Think you initialized the Sample class with
Sample("T","U")
You will get a string response at variable s as "TBU".
Value "T" is assigned to s from the primary constructor of Sample class.
Then immediately the init block starts to execute; it will add "B" to the s variable.
Next it is the secondary constructor turn; now "U" is added to the s variable to become "TBU".
Since,
The primary constructor cannot contain any code.
https://kotlinlang.org/docs/reference/classes.html
the init{..} blocks allow adding code to the primary constructor.
A class in Kotlin class a primary constructor (the one after a class name) which does not contain code, it is only able to initialize properties (e.g. class X(var prop: String)).
The init{..} block in the place, where you can put more code that will run after properties are initialized:
initializer blocks are executed in the same order as they appear in the class body, interleaved with the property initializers
More about that is in https://kotlinlang.org/docs/reference/classes.html#constructors
Here is an example:
class X(var b: String) {
val a = print("a")
init {
print("b")
}
constructor() : this("aaa") {
print("c")
}
}
X()
When called it prints abc. Thus the init{..} in invoked after primary constructor but before a secondary one.
As stated in the Kotlin docs:
The primary constructor cannot contain any code. Initialization code can be placed in initializer blocks, which are prefixed with the init keyword.
During an instance initialization, the initializer blocks are executed in the same order as they appear in the class body, interleaved with the property initializers: ...
https://kotlinlang.org/docs/classes.html#constructors
open class Super {
open var name : String = "Name1"
init {
println("INIT block fired with : $name")
name = name.toUpperCase()
println(name)
}
}
class SubClass(newName : String) : Super() {
override var name : String = "Mr. $newName"
}
fun main(args: Array<String>) {
var obj = SubClass("John")
println(obj.name)
}
The above Kotlin code results in the following TypeCastException :
INIT block fired with : null
Exception in thread "main" kotlin.TypeCastException: null cannot be cast to non-null type java.lang.String
at Super.<init>(index.kt:7)
at SubClass.<init>(index.kt:13)
at IndexKt.main(index.kt:21)
As my understanding goes while inheriting from a class in Kotlin, first the primary constructors and init blocks and secondary constructors of super classes are called with passed parameters. After which the subclass can override such properties with its own version.
Then why does the above code results in the exception as described ... What am I doing wrong ... Why does the init block in super class is fired with null ...??? At first my speculation was that the init block might get fired before the actual property initialization as it is executed as a part of primary constructor but initializing the name property in the primary constructor as below gives the same error and the IDE would have warned me if so.
open class Super(open var name : String = "Name1") {
init {
println("INIT block fired with : $name")
name = name.toUpperCase()
println(name)
}
}
class SubClass(newName : String) : Super() {
override var name : String = "Mr. $newName"
}
fun main(args: Array<String>) {
var obj = SubClass("John")
println(obj.name)
}
Console :
INIT block fired with : null
Exception in thread "main" kotlin.TypeCastException: null cannot be cast to non-null type java.lang.String
at Super.<init>(index.kt:5)
at Super.<init>(index.kt:1)
at SubClass.<init>(index.kt:11)
at IndexKt.main(index.kt:19)
Am I doing something wrong here or is this a language bug...??? What can I do to avoid the error and to make the init blocks fire with the actual passed value and not null ... ??? Elaborate what is happening behind the scene. At this time I have several situations with classes like this in my actual codebase where I want to inherit from another classes, I want to maintain property names as they are...
Essentially, because you tell Kotlin that your subclass is going to be defining name now, it is not defined when the init block in Super is executed. You are deferring definition of that until the SubClass is initialized.
This behavior is documented on the Kotlin website under "Derived class initialization order":
During construction of a new instance of a derived class, the base class initialization is done as the first step (preceded only by evaluation of the arguments for the base class constructor) and thus happens before the initialization logic of the derived class is run.
...
It means that, by the time of the base class constructor execution, the properties declared or overridden in the derived class are not yet initialized. If any of those properties are used in the base class initialization logic (either directly or indirectly, through another overridden open member implementation), it may lead to incorrect behavior or a runtime failure. Designing a base class, you should therefore avoid using open members in the constructors, property initializers, and init blocks. [emphasis mine]
FWIW, this is similar to the reason that some Java code analysis tools will complain if you refer to non-final methods in a constructor. The way around this in Kotlin is to not refer to open properties in your init blocks in the superclass.
Have the same trouble, a disgusting issue with kotlin, when subclass constructor is ignored or initialized after super class calls internal method, this is not a safe thing, if not worst i found in kotlin.
While developing for android I sometimes come across something that looks like this:
var someModel: someViewModel by notNullAndObservable { vm ->
...
}
I don't understand what the significance of the by keyword is.
In simple words, you can understand by keyword as provided by.
From the perspective of property consumer, val is something that has getter (get) and var is something that has getter and setter (get, set). For each var property there is a default provider of get and set methods that we don't need to specify explicitly.
But, when using by keyword, you are stating that this getter/getter&setter is provided elsewhere (i.e. it's been delegated). It's provided by the function that comes after by.
So, instead of using this built-in get and set methods, you are delegating that job to some explicit function.
One very common example is the by lazy for lazy loading properties.
Also, if you are using dependency injection library like Koin, you'll see many properties defined like this:
var myRepository: MyRepository by inject() //inject is a function from Koin
In the class definition, it follows the same principle, it defines where some function is provided, but it can refer to any set of methods/properties, not just get and set.
class MyClass: SomeInterface by SomeImplementation, SomeOtherInterface
This code is saying:
'I am class MyClass and I offer functions of interface SomeInterface which are provided by SomeImplementation.
I'll implement SomeOtherInterface by myself (that's implicit, so no by there).'
In the Kotlin reference you will find two uses for by, the first being Delegated Properties which is the use you have above:
There are certain common kinds of properties, that, though we can implement them manually every time we need them, would be very nice to implement once and for all, and put into a library. Examples include lazy properties: the value gets computed only upon first access,
observable properties: listeners get notified about changes to this property,
storing properties in a map, not in separate field each.
Here you delegate the getter/setter to another class that does the work and can contain common code. As another example, some of the dependency injectors for Kotlin support this model by delegating the getter to receiving a value from a registry of instances managed by the dependency injection engine.
And Interface/Class delegation is the other use:
The Delegation pattern has proven to be a good alternative to implementation inheritance, and Kotlin supports it natively requiring zero boilerplate code. A class Derived can inherit from an interface Base and delegate all of its public methods to a specified object
Here you can delegate an interface to another implementation so the implementing class only needs to override what it wants to change, while the rest of the methods delegate back to a fuller implementation.
A live example would be the Klutter Readonly/Immutable collections where they really just delegate the specific collection interface to another class and then override anything that needs to be different in the readonly implementation. Saving a lot of work not having to manually delegate all of the other methods.
Both of these are covered by the Kotlin language reference, start there for base topics of the language.
The syntax is:
val/var <property name>: <Type> by <expression>.
The expression after by is the delegate
if we try to access the value of property p, in other words, if we call get() method of property p, the getValue() method of Delegate instance is invoked.
If we try to set the value of property p, in other words, if we call set() method of property p, the setValue() method of Delegate instance is invoked.
Delegation for property:
import kotlin.reflect.KProperty
class Delegate {
// for get() method, ref - a reference to the object from
// which property is read. prop - property
operator fun getValue(ref: Any?, prop: KProperty<*>) = "textA"
// for set() method, 'v' stores the assigned value
operator fun setValue(ref: Any?, prop: KProperty<*>, v: String) {
println("value = $v")
}
}
object SampleBy {
var s: String by Delegate() // delegation for property
#JvmStatic fun main(args: Array<String>) {
println(s)
s = "textB"
}
}
Result:
textA
value = textB
Delegation for class:
interface BaseInterface {
val value: String
fun f()
}
class ClassA: BaseInterface {
override val value = "property from ClassA"
override fun f() { println("fun from ClassA") }
}
// The ClassB can implement the BaseInterface by delegating all public
// members from the ClassA.
class ClassB(classA: BaseInterface): BaseInterface by classA {}
object SampleBy {
#JvmStatic fun main(args: Array<String>) {
val classB = ClassB(ClassA())
println(classB.value)
classB.f()
}
}
Result:
property from ClassA
fun from ClassA
Delegation for parameters:
// for val properties Map is used; for var MutableMap is used
class User(mapA: Map<String, Any?>, mapB: MutableMap<String, Any?>) {
val name: String by mapA
val age: Int by mapA
var address: String by mapB
var id: Long by mapB
}
object SampleBy {
#JvmStatic fun main(args: Array<String>) {
val user = User(mapOf("name" to "John", "age" to 30),
mutableMapOf("address" to "city, street", "id" to 5000L))
println("name: ${user.name}; age: ${user.age}; " +
"address: ${user.address}; id: ${user.id}")
}
}
Result:
name: John; age: 30; address: city, street; id: 5000