Develop Reference

Kotlin Extension functions to split big classes

Recently at my company a debate started after reviewing a different approach for writing heavy duty classes.
A big Java class holding component specific logic (no standard OOP principles made sense) had to be rewritten in Kotlin. The solution provided was splitting the logic in categories and the categories into separate files with internal extension functions to the main class.
Example:
Main.kt
class BigClass {
// internal fields exposed to the extension functions in different files
// Some main logic here
}
BusinessLogic.kt
internal fun BigClass.handleBussinessCase() {
// Complex business logic handled here accessing the exposed internal fields from BigClass
}
What are your thoughts on this? I haven't seen it used anywhere maybe for a good reason, but the alternative of thousand lines classes seems worse.

You have to consider that an extension function is nothing more than a function with an implicit first parameter which is referenced with this.
So in your case you'd have something like:
internal fun handleBussinessCase(ref: BigClass)
which would translate to Java as:
static void handleBussinessCase(BigClass ref)
But this could be assumed to be a delegate pattern, which could be encapsulated much cleaner in Kotlin as well.
Since the properties have to be internal anyhow, you could just inject these as a data class into smaller use-cases. If you define an interface around these (which would make the properties public though), you could create a delegate pattern with it and still reference each property with this in your implementation.

Here are some thoughts on making extension functions for the class:
It will be a utility function that will operate with the object you're extending, it will not be an object function, meaning that it will have access to only public methods and properties;
If you're planning to use class that being extended in unit tests, these methods (extensions) will be harder to mock;
Most likely they wont behave as you expect when used with inherited objects.
Maybe I missed something, so please read more about extensions here.

Kotlin - can i use an extension for method overloading?

I have created a custom view in android. one of the methods has a signature like this:
fun show(CategoryFilterModel model) {/*...*/}
and it works fine. and now i'd like to create a overloaded function which would look like this if i did it by adding it to the custom view class:
fun show(ShopFilterModel model) {/*...*/}
Notice the type is different so this is a method overload.
a thought came to me that i could instead use an extension in kotlin to add another method to the class.
so it would like something like this:
fun MyCustomView.show(ShopFilterModel: model){
}
is this advised or should i only add utility methods with extensions ? Are there any overheads ?

It’s not only for utilities, as you can read in this great answer, which lists pretty much all use cases.
Imho, if you have control over that class you want to extend with a method, there’s no problem to add the method directly to it as opposed to doing it with an extension method. Yet, technically you can consider doing this. Please be aware that calling such an extension function from Java isn’t very idiomatic because it will be compiled to a static function. If it’s ever going to be invoked from Java, I’d rather use ordinary methods when possible.

Using Android Annotation in an existing project

I am trying to you use Android Annotations (https://github.com/excilys/androidannotations) in an existing project. I cannot convert the whole project to use Annotations. Can I have some activities that utilize annotations and some acitivites that doesn't use Annotations.
But When I did that, some functionalities stopped working. Like If I used only -
#ViewById(R.id.find)
public Button FIND;
...
...
#Override
protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
...
if (FIND != null) {
FIND.setOnClickListener(this);
}
...
}
OnClick on the button doesn't work. Is it mandatory to use #Click annotation.
Can't I just use annotations only where I wish to have. And other parts of the code be the old code without annotations. Please guide me.
Thanks

Please read the doc more carefully. The injected views are first available in the #AfterViews annotated methods:
#AfterViews
void afterViews() {
// you can use injected views here
}
https://github.com/excilys/androidannotations/wiki/Injecting-Views#afterviews

First of all please respect coding convention, you can find ax explanation here
Then, for your question, you can use code of both types: native android and android annotations one.
If you inflate a view using #ViewById annotation, you must keep in mind that the injection of the view is done at a certain point of the execution, so before of that your variable will be null.
As WonderCsabo reccommended to you, use injected views inside of #AfterViews annotated method.
Otherwise, if you want to mantain android native syntax, you MUST instantiate your view manually with findViewById method. Obviously after that you have setted activity's layout

Mockito avoid passing method arguments when calling Mockit.verify()

I want to test some method, for example:
public class testObj {
..
public void upload(Context context, Data data, Info info, Listener listener, Bla bla, ....) {
...
}
}
now in some cases i just want to know that this method was called, but i do not care about anyy of the arguments passed.
Now calling Mockito.any(Foo.class) is very discouraging, I know i can also use matchers but it's not that great also.
Is there some cleaner way to achive this?

No; verify needs to identify the method you're referring to, which means you'll need to call the correct method signature. Keeping an actual method call will also allow IDEs and automated refactoring tools to search for and modify the calls appropriately.
If you're running your tests from a Java 8 source environment, you can use any() with no argument; Java 8 has improved the ability to infer generic types when given as a parameter.
Though it usually makes more sense just to use matchers and explicit calls, you do have a few similar capabilities:
For stubbing, you can sometimes use a default answer to avoid specifying a lot of redundant calls and method values, but that won't help you with verification.
For verification, you can use MockingDetails.getInvocations() to inspect calls without using the built-in Mockito capabilities.
PowerMockito has private method verification by name, but not the same for public methods.

What does the annotations do exactly in Android at compile time?

#SuppressWarnings("unsued")
#Override
#SuppressLint({ "InflateParams", "SimpleDateFormat" })
I don't get why we need to declare annotations.

We want to facilitate the writing and the maintenance of Android applications.
We believe that simple code with clear intents is the best way to achieve those goals.
Robert C. Martin wrote:
The ratio of time spent reading [code] versus writing is well over 10 to 1 [therefore] making it easy to read makes it easier to write.
While we all enjoy developing Android applications, we often wonder: Why do we always need to write the same code over and over? Why are our apps harder and harder to maintain? Context and Activity god objects, complexity of juggling with threads, hard to discover API, loads of anonymous listener classes, tons of unneeded casts... can't we improve that?
How?
Using Java annotations, developers can show their intent and let AndroidAnnotations generate the plumbing code at compile time.
Features
Dependency injection: inject views, extras, system services, resources, ...
Simplified threading model: annotate your methods so that they execute on the UI thread or on a background thread.
Event binding: annotate methods to handle events on views, no more ugly anonymous listener classes!
REST client: create a client interface, AndroidAnnotations generates the implementation.
No magic: As AndroidAnnotations generate subclasses at compile time, you can check the code to see how it works.
AndroidAnnotations provide those good things and even more for less than 50kb, without any runtime perf impact!
Is your Android code easy to write, read, and maintain?
Look at that:
#EActivity(R.layout.translate) // Sets content view to R.layout.translate
public class TranslateActivity extends Activity {
#ViewById // Injects R.id.textInput
EditText textInput;
#ViewById(R.id.myTextView) // Injects R.id.myTextView
TextView result;
#AnimationRes // Injects android.R.anim.fade_in
Animation fadeIn;
#Click // When R.id.doTranslate button is clicked
void doTranslate() {
translateInBackground(textInput.getText().toString());
}
#Background // Executed in a background thread
void translateInBackground(String textToTranslate) {
String translatedText = callGoogleTranslate(textToTranslate);
showResult(translatedText);
}
#UiThread // Executed in the ui thread
void showResult(String translatedText) {
result.setText(translatedText);
result.startAnimation(fadeIn);
}
// [...]
}

Java annotations bind specific conditions to be satisfied with code. Consider a scenario where we think we are overriding a method from anther class and we implemented code that (we think) is overriding the method. But if we somehow missed to exactly override one (e.g. we misspelled name. In superclass it was "mMethodOverridden" and we typed "mMethodoverridden"). The method will still compile and execute but it will not be doing what it should do.
So #Override is our way of telling Java to let us know if we are doing right thing. If we annotate a method with #override and it is not overriding anything, compiler will give us an error.
Other annotations work in a very similar way.
For more information, read docs Lesson: annotations

Annotations are basically syntactic metadata that can be added to Java source code.Classes, methods, variables, parameters and packages may be annotated .
Metadata is data about data
Why Were Annotations Introduced?
Prior to annotation (and even after) XML were extensively used for metadata and somehow a particular set of Application Developers and Architects thought XML maintenance was getting troublesome. They wanted something which could be coupled closely with code instead of XML which is very loosely coupled (in some cases almost separate) from code. If you google “XML vs. annotations”, you will find a lot of interesting debates. Interesting point is XML configurations were introduced to separate configuration from code. Last two statements might create a doubt in your mind that these two are creating a cycle, but both have their pros and cons.
For eg:
#Override
It instructs the compiler to check parent classes for matching methods.