Kotlin’s extensions for each class

Extensions in Kotlin are very powerful mechanism. It allows for add any method to any of existing classes. Each instance has (as in Java) equals, toString and hashCode methods, but there is much more in Kotlin.Example classesLet’s define some simple cl…

Extensions in Kotlin are very powerful mechanism. It allows for add any method to any of existing classes. Each instance has (as in Java) equals, toString and hashCode methods, but there is much more in Kotlin.

Example classes

Let’s define some simple classes describing person: normal class and data class.

class PersonJaxb {
    var firstName: String? = null
    var lastName: String? = null
    var age: Int? = null
}

data class Person(val firstName: String, val lastName: String, val age: Int)

 

Normal class extensions

All instances have methods described below.

apply method

I often work with jaxb classes similar to PersonJaxb, which has not all arg constructor and all fields must be set via setters. Kotlin helps to deal with it via apply method. Target instance is provided as delagate to closure so we could define all fields values in it and returns this. The signature is T.apply(f: T.() -> Unit): T.

@Test
fun applyTest() {
    //when
    val person = PersonJaxb().apply {
        firstName = "John"
        lastName = "Smith"
        age = 20
    }

//then
assertEquals(20, person.age)
assertEquals(“John”, person.firstName)
assertEquals(“Smith”, person.lastName)
}

 

let method

Another extension is let method which is similar to map operation for collections. It has signature T.let(f: (T) -> R): R. this is passed as parameter to given closure/function.

@Test
fun letTest() {
    //when
    val fullName = Person("John", "Smith", 20).let {
        "${it.firstName} ${it.lastName}"
    }

//then
assertEquals(“John Smith”, fullName)
}

 

run method

run method looks like merge of apply and let methods: access to this is via delegate as in apply, but it also returns value as in let method. It has signature T.run(f: T.() -> R): R.

@Test
fun runTest() {
    //when
    val fullName = Person("John", "Smith", 20).run {
        "$firstName $lastName"
    }

//then
assertEquals(“John Smith”, fullName)
}

 

to method

Each instance has also defined to infix operator, which is used to create Pair. Pairs is helpful to create map entries. It has signature A.to(that: B): Pair<A, B>.

@Test
fun toTest() {
    //when
    val pair = Person("John", "Smith", 20) to 5

//then
assertEquals(Person(“John”, “Smith”, 20), pair.first)
assertEquals(5, pair.second)
}

 

Data class methods

Data class instances have also some other helpful methods (which are not extensions, but are generated for us).

componentX methods

Data class Person has three fields and it has component method generated for each of them: component1 for firstName, component2 for lastName and component3 for age.

@Test
fun componentsTest() {
    //when
    val p = Person("John", "Smith", 20)

//then
assertEquals(“John”, p.component1())
assertEquals(“Smith”, p.component2())
assertEquals(20, p.component3())
}

Why is it helpful? componentX methods are used in extracting (similar to Scala case classes extracting mechanism), e. g.:

@Test
fun extractingTest() {
    //when
    val (first, last, age) = Person("John", "Smith", 20)

//then
assertEquals(20, age)
assertEquals(“John”, first)
assertEquals(“Smith”, last)
}

 

copy method

copy method allows to create new instance based on current instance.

@Test
fun copyTest() {
    //when
    val person = Person("John", "Smith", 20).copy(lastName = "Kowalski", firstName = "Jan")

//then
assertEquals(Person(“Jan”, “Kowalski”, 20), person)
}

 

Summary

Kotlin’s extensions for each instances are very simple and help to solve many problems. The code written with these extensions is much more readable and concise than written in Java.

Sources are available here.

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Few months ago I've came across Groovy - powerful language for JVM platform which combines the power of Java with abilities typical for scripting languages (dynamic typing, metaprogramming).

Together with Groovy I've discovered spock framework (https://code.google.com/p/spock/) - specification framework for Groovy (of course you can test Java classes too!). But spock is not only test/specification framework - it also contains powerful mocking tools.

Even though spock is dedicated for Groovy there is no problem with using it for Java classes tests. In this post I'm going to describe how to configure Maven project to build and run spock specifications together with traditional JUnit tests.


Firstly, we need to prepare pom.xml and add necessary dependencies and plugins.

Two obligatory libraries are:
<dependency>
<groupid>org.spockframework</groupId>
<artifactid>spock-core</artifactId>
<version>0.7-groovy-2.0</version>
<scope>test</scope>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupid>org.codehaus.groovy</groupId>
<artifactid>groovy-all</artifactId>
<version>${groovy.version}</version>
<scope>test</scope>
</dependency>
Where groovy.version is property defined in pom.xml for more convenient use and easy version change, just like this:
<properties>
<gmaven-plugin.version>1.4</gmaven-plugin.version>
<groovy.version>2.1.5</groovy.version>
</properties>

I've added property for gmaven-plugin version for the same reason ;)

Besides these two dependencies, we can use few additional ones providing extra functionality:
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  • objenesis - enables mocking classes without default constructor
To add them to the project put these lines in <dependencies> section of pom.xml:
<dependency>
<groupid>cglib</groupId>
<artifactid>cglib-nodep</artifactId>
<version>3.0</version>
<scope>test</scope>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupid>org.objenesis</groupId>
<artifactid>objenesis</artifactId>
<version>1.3</version>
<scope>test</scope>
</dependency>

And that's all for dependencies section. Now we will focus on plugins necessary to compile Groovy classes. We need to add gmaven-plugin with gmaven-runtime-2.0 dependency in plugins section:
<plugin>
<groupid>org.codehaus.gmaven</groupId>
<artifactid>gmaven-plugin</artifactId>
<version>${gmaven-plugin.version}</version>
<configuration>
<providerselection>2.0</providerSelection>
</configuration>
<executions>
<execution>
<goals>
<goal>compile</goal>
<goal>testCompile</goal>
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</execution>
</executions>
<dependencies>
<dependency>
<groupid>org.codehaus.gmaven.runtime</groupId>
<artifactid>gmaven-runtime-2.0</artifactId>
<version>${gmaven-plugin.version}</version>
<exclusions>
<exclusion>
<groupid>org.codehaus.groovy</groupId>
<artifactid>groovy-all</artifactId>
</exclusion>
</exclusions>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupid>org.codehaus.groovy</groupId>
<artifactid>groovy-all</artifactId>
<version>${groovy.version}</version>
</dependency>
</dependencies>
</plugin>

With these configuration we can use spock and write our first specifications. But there is one issue: default settings for maven-surefire plugin demand that test classes must end with "..Test" postfix, which is ok when we want to use such naming scheme for our spock tests. But if we want to name them like CommentSpec.groovy or whatever with "..Spec" ending (what in my opinion is much more readable) we need to make little change in surefire plugin configuration:
<plugin>
<groupid>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
<artifactid>maven-surefire-plugin</artifactId>
<version>2.15</version>
<configuration>
<includes>
<include>**/*Test.java</include>
<include>**/*Spec.java</include>
</includes>
</configuration>
</plugin>

As you can see there is a little trick ;) We add include directive for standard Java JUnit test ending with "..Test" postfix, but there is also an entry for spock test ending with "..Spec". And there is a trick: we must write "**/*Spec.java", not "**/*Spec.groovy", otherwise Maven will not run spock tests (which is strange and I've spent some time to figure out why Maven can't run my specs).

Little update: instead of "*.java" postfix for both types of tests we can write "*.class" what is in my opinion more readable and clean:
<include>**/*Test.class</include>
<include>**/*Spec.class</include>
(thanks to Tomek Pęksa for pointing this out!)

With such configuration, we can write either traditional JUnit test and put them in src/test/java directory or groovy spock specifications and place them in src/test/groovy. And both will work together just fine :) In one of my next posts I'll write something about using spock and its mocking abilities in practice, so stay in tune.

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