Kotlin Help

Null safety

In Kotlin, it's possible to have a null value. To help prevent issues with null values in your programs, Kotlin has null safety in place. Null safety detects potential problems with null values at compile time, rather than at run time.

Null safety is a combination of features that allow you to:

  • explicitly declare when null values are allowed in your program.

  • check for null values.

  • use safe calls to properties or functions that may contain null values.

  • declare actions to take if null values are detected.

Nullable types

Kotlin supports nullable types which allows the possibility for the declared type to have null values. By default, a type is not allowed to accept null values. Nullable types are declared by explicitly adding ? after the type declaration.

For example:

fun main() { // neverNull has String type var neverNull: String = "This can't be null" // Throws a compiler error neverNull = null // nullable has nullable String type var nullable: String? = "You can keep a null here" // This is OK nullable = null // By default, null values aren't accepted var inferredNonNull = "The compiler assumes non-nullable" // Throws a compiler error inferredNonNull = null // notNull doesn't accept null values fun strLength(notNull: String): Int { return notNull.length } println(strLength(neverNull)) // 18 println(strLength(nullable)) // Throws a compiler error }

Check for null values

You can check for the presence of null values within conditional expressions. In the following example, the describeString() function has an if statement that checks whether maybeString is not null and if its length is greater than zero:

fun describeString(maybeString: String?): String { if (maybeString != null && maybeString.length > 0) { return "String of length ${maybeString.length}" } else { return "Empty or null string" } } fun main() { var nullString: String? = null println(describeString(nullString)) // Empty or null string }

Use safe calls

To safely access properties of an object that might contain a null value, use the safe call operator ?.. The safe call operator returns null if the object's property is null. This is useful if you want to avoid the presence of null values triggering errors in your code.

In the following example, the lengthString() function uses a safe call to return either the length of the string or null:

fun lengthString(maybeString: String?): Int? = maybeString?.length fun main() { var nullString: String? = null println(lengthString(nullString)) // null }

The safe call operator can also be used to safely call an extension or member function. In this case, a null check is performed before the function is called. If the check detects a null value, then the call is skipped and null is returned.

In the following example, nullString is null so the invocation of .uppercase() is skipped and null is returned:

fun main() { var nullString: String? = null println(nullString?.uppercase()) // null }

Use Elvis operator

You can provide a default value to return if a null value is detected by using the Elvis operator ?:.

Write on the left-hand side of the Elvis operator what should be checked for a null value. Write on the right-hand side of the Elvis operator what should be returned if a null value is detected.

In the following example, nullString is null so the safe call to access the length property returns a null value. As a result, the Elvis operator returns 0:

fun main() { var nullString: String? = null println(nullString?.length ?: 0) // 0 }

For more information about null safety in Kotlin, see Null safety.

Practice

Exercise

You have the employeeById function that gives you access to a database of employees of a company. Unfortunately, this function returns a value of the Employee? type, so the result can be null. Your goal is to write a function that returns the salary of an employee when their id is provided, or 0 if the employee is missing from the database.

data class Employee (val name: String, var salary: Int) fun employeeById(id: Int) = when(id) { 1 -> Employee("Mary", 20) 2 -> null 3 -> Employee("John", 21) 4 -> Employee("Ann", 23) else -> null } fun salaryById(id: Int) = // Write your code here fun main() { println((1..5).sumOf { id -> salaryById(id) }) }
data class Employee (val name: String, var salary: Int) fun employeeById(id: Int) = when(id) { 1 -> Employee("Mary", 20) 2 -> null 3 -> Employee("John", 21) 4 -> Employee("Ann", 23) else -> null } fun salaryById(id: Int) = employeeById(id)?.salary ?: 0 fun main() { println((1..5).sumOf { id -> salaryById(id) }) }

What's next?

Congratulations! Now that you have completed the Kotlin tour, check out our tutorials for popular Kotlin applications:

Last modified: 27 October 2023