13 DSL construction

This chapter covers

  • Building domain-specific languages
  • Using lambdas with receivers
  • Applying the invoke convention
  • Examples of existing Kotlin DSLs

In this chapter, we’ll discuss how you can design expressive and idiomatic APIs for your Kotlin classes through the use of domain-specific languages (DSLs). We’ll explore the differences between traditional and DSL-style APIs, and you’ll see how DSL-style APIs can be applied to a wide variety of practical problems in areas as diverse as database access, HTML generation, testing, writing build scripts, and many others.

Kotlin DSL design relies on many language features, two of which we haven’t yet fully explored. One of them you saw briefly in chapter 5: lambdas with receivers. ...

Get Kotlin in Action, Second Edition now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.

Start your free trial