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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

Late initialization


Any non-null property has to be initialized in the constructor. What if you want to inject the property value via a dependency injection and you don't want to check for null every time you access it? Or, maybe you simply set the property value in one of the methods exposed by your type. Kotlin comes with support for delayed initialization. All you have to do is use the lateinit keyword:

    class Container { 
      lateinit var delayedInitProperty: DelayedInstance 
 
      fun initProperty(instance: DelayedInstance): Unit { 
        this.delayedInitProperty = instance 
      } 
    } 
 
    class DelayedInstance (val number:Int) 
    ... 
    val container=  Container() 
    container.initProperty(DelayedInstance(10)) 
    println("with delayed initialization:Number=${container.delayedInitProperty.number}") 

There are a few restrictions when using delayed properties. Firstly, the property type cannot be a...

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