Destructuring Declarations in Kotlin

Sometimes it’s easy to destructure an object into multiple variables of different properties instead of calling it again and again using . operator on the property or instance itself. It is beneficial for a few reasons like,

We don’t have to use the dot property on the object again and again.
If the object is of a nullable type, we can do the null check only once and then we can destructure it to non-nullable properties.
The defined variable will be alive within the defined scope.
Fewer chances of confusion and more readability.

What is destructuring declaration?

Let’s try to understand what is a destructuring declaration and how does it works internally.

Usually, when we declare a property, we can initialise it with some value or mark it nullable. If we want to extract a property from an object, we need to do that for each and every property, individually.

Kotlin provides functionality to do that in a single declaration where we can destructure the object into multiple variables within a single declaration.

data class Employee (val name : String,
               val age: Int,
               val department: String)

var employee = Employee(name = "Suneet", age = 29, department = "Engineering")
    
var (name, age, department) = employee
    
println("$name at the age of $age is working in $department department")

    The output for the above print statement would be

Suneet at the age of 29 is working in Engineering department

How does it works internally?

The compiler internally uses the componentN function of Kotlin to destructure the object and assign them to the properties individually.

componentN is a functionality provided by Kotlin for any data class which return the Nth property (in sequence from the beginning) of that data class.

var (name, age, department) = employee

// is equivalent to

var name = employee.component1()
var age = employee.component2()
var department = employee.component3()

Things to keep in mind while using destructuring declaration

Since we don’t use componentN function directly in the destructuring declaration, we can’t skip any property. If we don’t need any property to be used, the compiler will still extract it but we can avoid it by replacing it with an underscore ( _ ) but we can’t skip it.

    var (name, _, department) = employee

Use cases of destructuring declaration

Destructuring declaration can be used anywhere but will try to list its common use cases where it can be way more useful and the readability would be better.

1. Normal Flow

Destructuring declaration can be used in any normal flow where an object’s properties need to be accessed multiple times.

var employee = Employee(name = "Suneet", age = 29, department = "Engineering")
    
var (name, age, department) = employee
println("$name at the age of $age is working in $department department")

2. For-In loop

Destructuring declaration can also be used with for-in loops. Instead of declaring the item while iteration, we can directly destructure them to variables and use them inside the loop.

val list = listOf(Employee(name = "Suneet", age = 29, department = "Engineering"),
                     Employee(name = "John", age = 40, department = "Marketing"),
                     Employee(name = "Agrawal", age = 35, department = "Sales"))
    
    for ((name, age, department) in list){
    	println("$name at the age of $age is working in $department department")
    }

3. Return from functions

Destructuring declaration is also helpful while returning multiple values from a function. Instead of getting the result into a variable and that accessing its individual properties, we can directly destructure it to individual properties.

fun getBestEmployee(): Employee {
    //do some calculations
    return Employee(name = "Suneet", age = 29, department = "Engineering")
}

val (name, age, department) = getBestEmployee()
println("The best Employee is $name")

Keep in mind we can use Pair or Triple also but it’s better to have a named variable instead of Pair and Triple as that uses first, second and third as variable names.

4. In Maps

Destructuring declaration can further be used with maps where each entry can be destructured into a key and a value where both can be used directly.

val map = mapOf(1 to "one", 2 to "two", 3 to "three")
    
for ((key, value) in map){
        println("$key is pointing to $value")
}

Tags: Kotlin