Kotlin coroutines have revolutionized JVM development, especially on Android and the backend, as they let us easily implement efficient and reliable multithreading. Their cutting-edge design and features are ideally suited to modern use cases. In this book, we will explore how Kotlin coroutines work and how we can use them to improve our applications – using both the built-in support and the kotlinx.coroutines library.
This is a practical book. It shows everything with examples and focuses on real-life use cases. As this technology is already widely used on Android and backend applications, we will see how we can use it there and what the best practices are.
Why coroutines?
The importance of concurrency is growing, but the classic techniques are not enough. Current trends suggest that coroutines are where our industry is clearly heading, and Kotlin coroutines are a very solid step in the right direction. Let me show them to you, with examples of how well they help in common use cases. I hope you will have a lot of fun reading this book.
Who this book is for
This book is for Kotlin developers who want to understand Kotlin Coroutines and learn to use them in real-life projects in accordance with best practices. The book focuses on backend and Android use cases, but it also presents knowledge that can be used on other platforms.
The structure of this book
The book is divided into the following parts:
- Part 1: Understanding Kotlin Coroutines - dedicated to explaining what Kotlin Coroutines are and how they really work.
- Part 2: Kotlin Coroutines library - explaining the most important concepts from the kotlinx.coroutines library and how to use them well.
- Part 3: Channel and Flow - focused on Channel and Flow from the kotlinx.coroutines library.
What is covered
This book is based on a workshop I conduct. During its iterations I have been able to observe what interested attendees and what did not. These are the elements that are most often mentioned by attendees, so I mainly focus on the following:
- How do coroutines really work? (Part 1)
- How to use coroutines in practice? (Part 2 and 3)
- What are the best practices? (Part 2 and 3)
- Testing Kotlin coroutines (Testing Kotlin Coroutines in Part 2)
- What is Flow and how does it work? (Part 3)
Marcin Moskała
Marcin Moskala is an experienced developer and Kotlin trainer. He is the founder of the Kt. Academy, an official JetBrains partner for Kotlin training, author of the books Effective Kotlin, Kotlin Coroutines, Functional Kotlin and Android Development with Kotlin. He is also the main author of the biggest medium publication about Kotlin and a speaker invited to many programming conferences.
