Use argument passed to when in branch condition in Kotlin? - kotlin

Question

I have some code that roughly looks like this:
val myObject = myObjectRepository.findById(myObjectId);
when {
matchesSomething(myObject) -> doSomethingWithMyObject(myObject)
matchesSomethingElse(myObject) -> doSomethingElseWithMyObject(myObject)
else -> log.warn("No match, aborting");
}
While this works I would think that the following (which doesn't work) would be an improvement if I only need access to myObject inside the scope of when:
when(myObjectRepository.findById(myObjectId)) { myObject ->
matchesSomething(myObject) -> doSomethingWithMyObject(myObject)
matchesSomethingElse(myObject) -> doSomethingElseWithMyObject(myObject)
else -> log.warn("No match, aborting");
}
The error I get here is:
Unresolved reference: myObject
Can you do something like this in Kotlin and if so how? If not, is there a particular reason for why this shouldn't be allowed?

Answer 1

As shown in the documentation, the proper syntax would be
val myObject = myObjectRepository.findById(myObjectId);
when {
matchesSomething(myObject) -> doSomethingWithMyObject(myObject)
matchesSomethingElse(myObject) -> doSomethingElseWithMyObject(myObject)
else -> log.warn("myObject not found, aborting")
}
Or, to actually match what your first snippet does:
val myObject = myObjectRepository.findById(myObjectId);
when(myObject) {
null -> log.warn("myObject not found, aborting");
matchesSomething(myObject) -> doSomethingWithMyObject(myObject)
matchesSomethingElse(myObject) -> doSomethingElseWithMyObject(myObject)
}

Answer 2

You have to be careful about the syntax. In a while we use an arrow -> which has nothing to do with lambdas. I think this is what you were trying in your example.
The only valid syntax for when is this:
when (x) {
1 -> print("x == 1")
2 -> print("x == 2")
else -> { // Note the block
print("x is neither 1 nor 2")
}
On the left side of the arrow -> you declare what the object (x) is being matched against, whereas on the right side you tell what will be executed in that case. Read about this here.
In your example you tried to chain multiple -> which does not work.

Answer 3

This is supported as of Kotlin 1.3. It's referred to as "Capturing when subject in a variable" and looks like this (taken from their documentation):
fun Request.getBody() =
when (val response = executeRequest()) {
is Success -> response.body
is HttpError -> throw HttpException(response.status)
}