Cannot find setter for field - using Kotlin with Room database

Question

I'm integrating with the Room persistence library. I have a data class in Kotlin like:

@Entity(tableName = "story")
data class Story (
        @PrimaryKey val id: Long,
        val by: String,
        val descendants: Int,
        val score: Int,
        val time: Long,
        val title: String,
        val type: String,
        val url: String
)

The @Entity and @PrimaryKey annotations are for the Room library. When I try to build, it is failing with error:

Error:Cannot find setter for field.
Error:Execution failed for task ':app:compileDebugJavaWithJavac'.
> Compilation failed; see the compiler error output for details.

I also tried providing a default constructor:

@Entity(tableName = "story")
data class Story (
        @PrimaryKey val id: Long,
        val by: String,
        val descendants: Int,
        val score: Int,
        val time: Long,
        val title: String,
        val type: String,
        val url: String
) {
    constructor() : this(0, "", 0, 0, 0, "", "", "")
}

But this doesn't work as well. A thing to note is that it works if I convert this Kotlin class into a Java class with getters and setters. Any help is appreciated!

Answer 1

Since your fields are marked with val, they are effectively final and don't have setter fields.

Try switching out the val with var. You might also need to initialize the fields.

@Entity(tableName = "story")
data class Story (
        @PrimaryKey var id: Long? = null,
        var by: String = "",
        var descendants: Int = 0,
        var score: Int = 0,
        var time: Long = 0L,
        var title: String = "",
        var type: String = "",
        var url: String = ""
)

EDIT

The above solution is a general fix for this error in Kotlin when using Kotlin with other Java libraries like Hibernate where i've seen this as well. If you want to keep immutability with Room, see some of the other answers which may be more specific to your case.

In some cases immutability with Java libraries is simply not working at all and while making sad developer noises, you have to switch that val for a var unfortunately.