I have a newbie generics question here. I'm using a library (KMongo) that exposes an inline method with reified parameter:

inline fun <reified TDocument : Any> getCollection(
    collectionName: String = KMongoUtil.defaultCollectionName(TDocument::class)
): CoroutineCollection<TDocument>

In my code I want to create an interface with a default method that would return a collection for specified type:

interface MongoDBRepository<T: Any> {

    val client: CoroutineClient

    fun collection(): CoroutineCollection<T> {
        return client.getDatabase(accountId).getCollection<T>()
    }

}

However, the compiler complains that 'T' can not be used as a reified type parameter here. And defining a reified type parameter would require me to change collection() to an inline function which is something I can not do in an interface. Any thoughts on how to change the code to make an interface functional? Or am I doing something completely wrong?

If you do not need to override the method, you can rewrite the function as inline extension function with reified type parameter

Classes or Interfaces can not have a reified type parameter

This works perfectly. But as I said, you won't be able to override it

import io.ktor.client.HttpClient
import <http://io.ktor.client.request.post|io.ktor.client.request.post>

interface BaseApi {
    val client: HttpClient
}

suspend inline fun <Request: Any, reified Response: Any> <http://BaseApi.post|BaseApi.post>(url: String, request: Request? = null): Response {
    return <http://client.post|client.post>(url) {
        request?.let {
            body = it
        }
    }
}