How to create an instance of anonymous class of abstract class in Kotlin?

java abstract-class kotlin
Tvaroh picture Tvaroh · Jul 8, 2013 · Viewed 42.2k times · Source

Assume that KeyAdapter is an abstract class with several methods that can be overridden.

In java I can do:

KeyListener keyListener = new KeyAdapter() {
    @Override public void keyPressed(KeyEvent keyEvent) {
        // ...
    }
};

How to do the same in Kotlin?

Answer

Michael Lang picture Michael Lang · Jul 8, 2013

From the official Kotlin language documentation:

window.addMouseListener(object : MouseAdapter() { 
    override fun mouseClicked(e : MouseEvent) { 
    // ... 
}

Applied to your problem at hand:

val keyListener = object : KeyAdapter() { 
    override fun keyPressed(keyEvent : KeyEvent) { 
    // ... 
}

As Peter Lamberg has pointed out - if the anonymous class is actually an implementation of a functional interface (i.e. not of an abstract class), SAM Conversions can be used to simplify this statement even further:

val keyListener = KeyAdapter { keyEvent ->
    // ...
}

Please also note this discussion about the different usage of interfaces defined in Java and Kotlin.

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