Extension functions in kotlin

Kotlin language recently gained some traction owing to Google promoting it as a primary language for writing android apps. Kotlin has already been for a while in production owing to it’s creator JetBrains incorporating it in own tools, such as Intellij IDEA and so forth.

One, amongst many other neat features, is extension functions. In depth documentation can be found on official kotlin website.

About extension functions

In short – extension functions provide us useful tool to extend any existing class, no matter if it’s part of JDK, some 3rd party library or even own, custom ones.

Example, taken from this project, is the following one:

fun Random.betweenInclusive(lower: Int, upper: Int) = this.nextInt(upper - lower) + lower

Here we extend java.util.Random class from the JDK, with betweenInclusive(lower: Int, upper: Int) extension function. This method helps us generate random integer between two numbers, lower and upper bounds, inclusive. Project contains couple of useful extension functions, implemented in rs/dodalovic/extension_functions/Students.kt kotlin file. Other examples are extending java.util.List with additional capabilities, taking advantage of functional programming applied on collections.

Running sample application

Application has Gradle build tool packaged inside application, so you’re good to go:

# execute from project root

./gradlew -q -PmainClass=rs.dodalovic.extension_functions.StudentsKt execute

Output would be similar to:

\***\* Students average: 3.22 \*\***

Above average:
[
{'name':'name_4','lastname':'lastname_4','average':'4.0','marks':'[5, 2, 4, 4, 5]'}
,
{'name':'name_5','lastname':'lastname_5','average':'4.4','marks':'[5, 5, 4, 4, 4]'}
,
{'name':'name_7','lastname':'lastname_7','average':'3.4','marks':'[1, 4, 2, 5, 5]'}
]

Below average:
[
{'name':'name_1','lastname':'lastname_1','average':'2.6','marks':'[2, 3, 2, 2, 4]'}
,
{'name':'name_2','lastname':'lastname_2','average':'3.2','marks':'[1, 5, 2, 5, 3]'}
,
{'name':'name_3','lastname':'lastname_3','average':'2.6','marks':'[4, 1, 2, 1, 5]'}
,
{'name':'name_6','lastname':'lastname_6','average':'2.8','marks':'[1, 4, 5, 2, 2]'}
,
{'name':'name_8','lastname':'lastname_8','average':'3.2','marks':'[4, 3, 4, 4, 1]'}
,
{'name':'name_9','lastname':'lastname_9','average':'3.2','marks':'[1, 4, 5, 5, 1]'}
,
{'name':'name_10','lastname':'lastname_10','average':'2.8','marks':'[5, 5, 1, 2, 1]'}
]

Highest mark:
5

Best student:

{'name':'name_5','lastname':'lastname_5','average':'4.4','marks':'[5, 5, 4, 4, 4]'}

Calling extensions on null references

It is even possible to call extension on a null reference. In extension implementation, we can, using this keyword, check if reference was null or not, and perform any logic based upon that.

Here's an example:

fun <T> T?.nullSafeToString(): String {
  return this?.toString() ?: "NULL"
}

fun main() {
  println(null.nullSafeToString())
  println("Kotlin".nullSafeToString())
}

Source code can be checked out from GitHub repository

That was all for today! Hope you liked it!