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kotlinlang

I thought I understood kotlin coroutines :man-facepalming:

I have this function in my repository of my android application
```
override suspend fun displayItem(contentId: Long): DisplayItemState =
        withContext(<http://Dispatchers.IO|Dispatchers.IO>) {
            val encodedUrl = encode("${BuildConfig.MY_CONTENT_C_URL}$contentId", StandardCharsets.UTF_8.name())
            DisplayItemState(Intent(Intent.ACTION_VIEW, Uri.parse("${BuildConfig.MY_MOBILE_CLICK}${loginToken()!!}?url=$encodedUrl")))
        }```

which is called in this `init{}` of my viewModel


private lateinit var notificationDisplayItem: DisplayItemState

    init {
        if (isNotification) viewModelScope.launch {
            when (notificationAction) {
                VALUE_ARG_SPECIALTY_NOTIFICATION_ACTION_VIEW -&gt; notificationDisplayItem = repository.displayItem(contentId!!)
                VALUE_ARG_SPECIALTY_NOTIFICATION_ACTION_SAVE -&gt; TODO("Should never occur as save broadcast receiver")
                VALUE_ARG_SPECIALTY_NOTIFICATION_ACTION_DISCARD -&gt; TODO("Should never occur as discard broadcast receiver")
                else -&gt; TODO("Unexpected notification action $notificationAction")
            }
        }
    }

the issue is the `lateinit` variable `notificationDisplayItem` is not being initialized
how can i get my code to "wait" for the call to `repository.displayItem(contentId!!)` to respond

If I’m understanding right, you want the constructor to suspend? That’s not possible, especially since this constructor will presumably be invoked by the platform

Why does `displayItem` need to suspend, though?

oh , thats a good question :thinking_face:

does the function loginToken() also suspend? If so, displayItem needs to suspend

Didn’t spot that, it’s very well hidden :smile:

&gt; does the function loginToken() also suspend? If so, displayItem needs to suspend
yes it does

how i got to this "position" is that android studio flags the `encode` call with "P_*ossibly blocking call in non-blocking context could lead to thread starvation*_"

and i was investigating how i could resolve this
i have a feeling `encode` is not that big an issue

Where is that `encode` function coming from? There are a few things that could cause that warning, e.g. declaring certain types of exception

Hah :smile: so it looks like the warning is because that method declares `UnsupportedEncodingException`, which extends `IOException`. The IDE sees that and assumes that IOException = IO = blocking, which is a pretty big leap :smile:

Your feeling is correct, you can safely suppress that warning

Just to answer the original question, in the more general case where you do actually need to do something suspending on init and potentially wait for it later you can use a Deferred:
```private val notificationDisplayItem: Deferred&lt;DisplayItemState&gt; = viewModelScope.async {//suspending work}```
where it's needed:
```notificationDisplayItem.await() //returns result, suspends or throws```