How to call a function defined inside a companion object, if I can only get to the companion object ...

# announcements

[Karlo Lozovina]

How to call a function defined inside a companion object, if I can only get to the companion object by reflection, so: SomeClass::class.companionObjectInstance

[Youssef Shoaib [MOD]]

Cast it to the type SomeClass.Companion or to an interface that you know it'll implement. Worst case scenario, just reflect over the functions on the companionObjectInstance

[Karlo Lozovina]

Thanks for the info, making the Companion object implement an interface and then casting to it worked great!

[Tomasz Krakowiak]

Reject the dark side and seek light (solution that doesn't require reflection) : )
Maybe if tell us why you can only obtain companion object via reflection, I can figure something out.

[Karlo Lozovina]

Is reflection really seen as that bad? 🙂 I'm kind of new to Kotlin, I'm porting an app that uses macros a lot, reflection seems like a natural fit for that (or compiler plugins, but that's above my paygrade for now)

[Tomasz Krakowiak]

@Karlo Lozovina Reflaction is slow, not-typesafe and it works on static definitions that cannot be generated on runtime without code manipulation.

[Karlo Lozovina]

I figured as much, so far I'm doing all the reflection work at startup away from any hot loops and such, as far as typesafety goes I haven't been bitten that badly yet 😆

[Tomasz Krakowiak]

Yes, but the more I wait for some spring-boot servers to start, the more I am convinced that it's time to focus on doing whatever can be done during build during build. This also creates division between server and client technologies, which is bad for ecosystem.