so, i just asked this in general, but i see this t...

# stdlib

[madorb]

so, i just asked this in general, but i see this the questions here are related… is there any commonly-used library, that’s like “kotlin: the missing bits” that extends the stdlib with various convenience functions that perhaps haven’t yet made it into the stdlib?

[elizarov]

There are various kotlinx things but they are not just "missing bits", but big cohesive chunks. There is nothing like Guava -- stdlib is for that.

[elizarov]

Are you looking for anything specific that you think is missing from stdlib?

[madorb]

no, not anything specific necessarily, but there are a number of methods, like the the one i put in #general ( String?.ifNullOrBlank(altValue: String): String ) that i think could be generally useful but that aren’t in the stdlib . The various types of things that have traditionally ended up in apache commons StringUtils, DateUtils, etc. or Guava. Obviously a lot of that functionality is in the standard lib, but not all of it

[madorb]

i’m finding myself creating my own String.kt with small 1-liner extension functions that i can reuse across projects, so was curious if there is any sort of community library that has traction that does the same

[elizarov]

Just post those snippets to this channel. Maybe there are already concise equivalents in stdlib or they will become candidates for future improvements in stdlib

[elizarov]

Btw, your particular use-case is quite idiomatically written as str?.takeUnless { it.isEmpty() } ?: altValue

[elizarov]

P.S. the extension like String?.ifNullOrBlank is unlikely to ever make it to stdlib, since nullable strings are very uncommon in idiomatic Kotlin code. Idiomatic Kotlin code tends to have very few nullable variables.

[madorb]

agreed on that - that’s why i was initially asking about a 3rd party library, some things may make no sense at all in idiomatic kotlin, but could be nice-to-haves when interacting with java