There's no trivial way to make a `value class` exp...

# getting-started

[Rob Elliot]

There's no trivial way to make a value class expose all its value's members at the top level is there?

[Sam]

Sure, change it from a value class to a typealias 😉😄

[Rob Elliot]

I want the type safety.

[Sam]

The only other way I can think of is if the value implements an interface, you should be able to use interface delegation on the value class: https://kotlinlang.org/docs/whatsnew17.html#allow-implementation-by-delegation-to-an-inlined-value-of-an-inline-class

[Rob Elliot]

It doesn't, but it might be an idea to pull an interface out to get the behaviour. Bit more work than I was hoping for though.

[phldavies]

I wonder if a simple plugin using https://square.github.io/kotlinpoet or KSP would work to generate some extension properties to directly expose the properties of the boxed value might work

[Rob Elliot]

Thanks, I was just checking that there was nothing out of the box I was ignorant of - I can always delegate manually.

[Youssef Shoaib [MOD]]

A feature proposal could be to have `transparent value class`es that pretend like they're subtypes of their underlying value but without being allowed to override any of its methods or properties (potentially even including toString for consistency's sake). I made a similar feature proposal a while back, but it was very speculative and under-specified. Transparent value classes could also be a good gateway for Kotlin to get into refined types, but that's a whole another story.