Suspending Functions and the Coroutine Context

So far, we have limited ourselves to writing suspending code using coroutine builders such as launch and async, but Kotlin offers more ways to write it. In this chapter, we will start by updating our RSS reader to actually display the articles that it retrieved, then we will learn about suspending functions and compare them with the async functions that we have been using so far. Also, we will cover the coroutine context and its use in detail.

Here is a summary of topics that will be covered in this chapter:

• What a suspending function is
• How to use suspending functions
• When to use async functions instead of suspending functions
• What the coroutine context is
• Different types of contexts such as dispatcher, exception handlers, and non-cancellables
• Combining and separating contexts to define the behavior of coroutines

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