Why is the type of `type` `Base<out Any>` and not `Base<Any>`? How to achieve the latte...

# getting-started

[David Kubecka]

Why is the type of type Base<out Any> and not Base<Any>? How to achieve the latter type?

sealed interface Base<T>

class A : Base<Int>
class B : Base<String>

val cond = false
val type = when (cond) {
    true -> A()
    false -> B()
}

[Sam]

Well, you could declare the interface as

sealed interface Base<out T>

but that feels like it's just moving the problem 😄

[David Kubecka]

Exactly. In reality the T is invariant. Am I doomed?

[Sam]

Depends what you're trying to achieve, but if Base really is invariant in T then I think you've answered your own question

[David Kubecka]

What I need is to write a repository dispatcher:

override fun save(messageKey: ..., messageValue: ...) {
        val repo = selectRepo(messageKey)

        val newDocument = repo.findById(messageKey.id)
            ?.apply { lastUpdate = messageValue.lastUpdate }
            ?: messageValue

        // this fails because it requires Type in the "in" position
        repo.save(newDocument)
    }

fun selectRepo(messageKey: ...): Repository<out Type> =
   when (...) { 
      // dispatching here
   }

Perhaps there's a different way how to structure this?

[David Kubecka]

Well, I can probably pass a lambda to selectRepo to directly perform the desired action.

[Sam]

My suggestion would be to capture the type of the repository by creating a function with its own generic type parameter. It would look something like this:

override fun save(messageKey: ..., messageValue: ...) {
    val repo = selectRepo(messageKey)
    repo.update(messageKey, messageValue)
}

private fun <T: Type> Repository<T>.update(messageKey, messageValue) {
    val newDocument = findById(messageKey.id)
        ?.apply { lastUpdate = messageValue.lastUpdate }
        ?: messageValue

    // this fails because it requires Type in the "in" position
    repo.save(newDocument)
}

[Sam]

It works because the update function knows that the type returned by findById and the type accepted by save must be the same, even if the actual type is unknown

[Sam]

I don't know if Kotlin has any good documentation/sources relating to generic type capture, but the concept is much the same as in Java

[David Kubecka]

Yeah, I probably understand the problem: In my version repo is Repository<out Type> so findById also return out Type and that can't be passed to any method on the repo (because that requires in).

I will try your suggestion,. Thanks.

[David Kubecka]

Hmm, doesn't work as the problem just got transferred to repo.update(messageKey, messageValue) 🙂

[Sam]

Maybe the ?: messageValue part is messing things up 😞. It should be a solvable problem, but an unchecked cast might be easier 😄

[David Kubecka]

No, the concrete type is messageValue: CodebookBase and the error is on messageValue in repo.update(messageKey, messageValue) :

Type mismatch.
Required:
CapturedType(out CodebookBase)
Found:
CodebookBase

[Sam]

Yeah, that's what I thought it might be 😞

[David Kubecka]

But how to even cast it? To what? 🙂

[David Kubecka]

Got it. Need to unchecked-cast the repo. I guess there really is no clean way around this. I you find some then let me know, though 🙂 Thanks

[Daniel Pitts]

If T could be either String or Int, then it must be out of their common base. Otherwise you could pass in a String to the Int type, or an Int to the String type, or worse yet, a Foo to the Int type.

[Daniel Pitts]

The problem isn't the type system, its the conditionally having different types.