Essentially I just want a public class but with pr...

# announcements

[Joel Armstrong]

Essentially I just want a public class but with protected constructor (I understand this isn't possible in Kotlin) so that the only way to construct it is through the factory

[Czar]

why would you think that it is impossible?
open class PublicClassProtectedConstructor protected constructor(/*...*/)

[Czar]

in your ☕ example you missed that Factory extends PublicClassProtectedConstructor to be able to see the constructor 🙂

[fred.deschenes]

I'd probably do something like this : https://gist.github.com/FredDeschenes/cb5a3c822f8b1396d0d291773977567c

[Joel Armstrong]

The issue is that I have multiple different constructors within the factory with vastly different parameters. I'm building midi byte sequences; sometimes there are no parameters; sometimes I need a device ID; sometimes it takes a volume and patch number...

[fred.deschenes]

you can still have multiple constructors

[fred.deschenes]

did your factory methods just get the arguments and just send them to a protected constructor?

[Joel Armstrong]

The factory methods take the arguments and place them into a sequence of bytes. Often logic is involved

[Joel Armstrong]

Then that is sent to the constructor

[fred.deschenes]

class PublicClassProtectedConstructor private constructor(private val bytes: ByteArray) {
    companion object Factory {
        fun factory1(deviceId: String): PublicClassProtectedConstructor {
            val bytes = ByteArray(0) // Setup however
            return PublicClassProtectedConstructor(bytes)
        }

        fun factory2(volume: Int, patch: Int): PublicClassProtectedConstructor {
            val bytes = ByteArray(0) // Setup however
            return PublicClassProtectedConstructor(bytes)
        }
    }
}