this is a subjective design question, but: say you...

# getting-started

[y]

this is a subjective design question, but:
say you've got

interface Foo { 
  /* ... */ 
}
interface Bar {
  val thing: Thing
  /* ... */ 
}

fun getFooByName(s: String): Foo? = /* ... */
// no getBarByName

// ... and a bunch of classes that implement some combination of Foo and Bar

would you add a fun asBar(): Bar? or even fun getThing(): Thing? for Foo, or is that silly from a coupling/API design point of view?

[Michael de Kaste]

I've personally only ever exposed a

val thing: Thing?

on a sealed interface where only 1 or 2 implementations have a thing and the others do not. (where translating it to an API object was easier to do with nullable fields)

I don't see the need for asBar() func as

as Bar?

functionally does the same.

In most cases I would advice against such pattern, but it depends on the usage and situation, like everything

[y]

for some more context, Foo and Bar used to be a single interface that (for no good reason, imho) was later split into Bar which contains val Thing and nothing else

[Joffrey]

> for no good reason, imho
Splitting an interface like this makes the code more type-safe. You can use Bar instead of Foo in areas of the code where you know the objects have a thing. It's usually better to do this than to have a nullable property and never know at compile time whether it's there or not.

[y]

@Joffrey that's almost certainly why this was done. thanks for this