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Programming Kotlin

You're reading from   Programming Kotlin Get to grips quickly with the best Java alternative

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Product type Paperback
Published in Jan 2017
Publisher Packt
ISBN-13 9781787126367
Length 420 pages
Edition 1st Edition
Languages
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Authors (2):
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Stefan Bocutiu Stefan Bocutiu
Author Profile Icon Stefan Bocutiu
Stefan Bocutiu
Stephen Samuel Stephen Samuel
Author Profile Icon Stephen Samuel
Stephen Samuel
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Toc

Table of Contents (14) Chapters Close

Preface 1. Getting Started with Kotlin FREE CHAPTER 2. Kotlin Basics 3. Object-Oriented Programming in Kotlin 4. Functions in Kotlin 5. Higher Order Functions and Functional Programming 6. Properties 7. Null Safety, Reflection, and Annotations 8. Generics 9. Data Classes 10. Collections 11. Testing in Kotlin 12. Microservices with Kotlin 13. Concurrency

The copy method

When using a data class, you get a copy method out of the box. This method allows you to create a new instance of your type while cherry-picking the fields you want to change. For example, you may decide that you want to get a new BlogEntry instance from an existing instance of which you just want to change the title and description fields:

    blogEntry.copy(title = "Properties in Kotlin", description =  "Properties are awesome in Kotlin")

If you are familiar with Java, you will notice a similarity with the clone method. However, the copy method is more powerful; it allows you to change any of the fields in your new copied instance.

If you look at the parameter information of the copy method (CTRLP is the default keyboard shortcut), you should see the following:

The copy method

Copy method parameters

In the screenshot, you can see that each field is contained within [], thus marking it optional. To make this work, the compiler generates two methods...

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