Kotlin support
Spring Data adapts specifics of Kotlin to allow object creation and mutation.
Kotlin object creation
Kotlin classes are supported to be instantiated , all classes are immutable by default and require explicit property declarations to define mutable properties. Consider the following data
class Person
:
data class Person(val id: String, val name: String)
The class above compiles to a typical class with an explicit constructor. We can customize this class by adding another constructor and annotate it with @PersistenceConstructor
to indicate a constructor preference:
data class Person(var id: String, val name: String) {
@PersistenceConstructor
constructor(id: String) : this(id, "unknown")
}
Kotlin supports parameter optionality by allowing default values to be used if a parameter is not provided.
When Spring Data detects a constructor with parameter defaulting, then it leaves these parameters absent if the data store does not provide a value (or simply returns null
) so Kotlin can apply parameter defaulting. Consider the following class that applies parameter defaulting for name
data class Person(var id: String, val name: String = "unknown")
Every time the name
parameter is either not part of the result or its value is null
, then the name
defaults to unknown
.
Property population of Kotlin data classes
In Kotlin, all classes are immutable by default and require explicit property declarations to define mutable properties. Consider the following data
class Person
:
data class Person(val id: String, val name: String)
This class is effectively immutable. It allows to create new instances as Kotlin generates a copy(…)
method that creates new object instances copying all property values from the existing object and applying property values provided as arguments to the method.