topic: Classes

Hard Prerequisites
IMPORTANT: Please review these prerequisites, they include important information that will help you with this content.
  • TOPICS: Basic Control Flow
  • Classes in Kotlin are declared using the keyword class:

    class Invoice {
        }
    

    Constructors

    A class in Kotlin can have a primary constructor and one or more secondary constructors.

    class Person constructor(firstName: String) {
        }
    

    Secondary Constructors

    The class can also declare secondary constructors, which are prefixed with constructor:

    class Person {
        constructor(parent: Person) {
        parent.children.add(this)
        }
        }
    

    Creating instances of classes

    To create an instance of a class, we call the constructor as if it were a regular function:

     val invoice = Invoice()
    
        val customer = Customer("Joe Smith")
    

    Note: that Kotlin does not have a new keyword.

    Inheritance

    All classes in Kotlin have a common superclass Any, that is a default super for a class with no supertypes declared:

     class Example // Implicitly inherits from Any
    Any is not java.lang.Object; in particular, it does not have any members other than equals(), hashCode() and toString().
    

    To declare an explicit supertype, we place the type after a colon in the class header:

    open class Base(p: Int)
    
        class Derived(p: Int) : Base(p)
    

    Overriding Methods

    Kotlin requires explicit annotations for overridable members (we call them open) and for overrides:

    open class Base {
        open fun v() {}
        fun nv() {}
        }
        class Derived() : Base() {
        override fun v() {}
        }
    

    The override annotation is required for Derived.v(). If it were missing, the compiler would complain.

    Abstract Classes

    A class and some of its members may be declared abstract. An abstract member does not have an implementation in its class.

    We can override a non-abstract open member with an abstract one

    open class Base {
        open fun f() {}
        }
    
         abstract class Derived : Base() {
        override abstract fun f()
        }
    

    RAW CONTENT URL