Last week Kotlin/Native saw its second preview release. In case you missed it, Kotlin/Native is an another backend for Kotlin (in addition to JVM and JavaScript), which doesn’t require any VM and runs natively on many supported platforms.

I played with it over the weekend, and it appeared to be already pretty good and solid for an early tech preview. To start with I took a sample GTK+ application written in Kotlin and tried to improve it. Let’s see what I did (spoiler alert: I rewrote it almost entirely).

Demo application

The original sample code doesn’t look very different from its pure C equivalent.

fun activate ( app : CPointer < GtkApplication >?, user_data : gpointer ?) { val windowWidget = gtk_application_window_new ( app ) !! val window = windowWidget . reinterpret < GtkWindow >() gtk_window_set_title ( window , "Window" ); gtk_window_set_default_size ( window , 200 , 200 ) val button_box = gtk_button_box_new ( GtkOrientation . GTK_ORIENTATION_HORIZONTAL ) !! gtk_container_add ( window . reinterpret (), button_box ); val button = gtk_button_new_with_label ( "Konan говорит: click me!" ) !! g_signal_connect ( button , "clicked" , staticCFunction { widget : CPointer < GtkApplication >?, data : gpointer ? -> println ( "Hi Kotlin" ) }); g_signal_connect ( button , "clicked" , staticCFunction { widget : CPointer < GtkWidget >? -> gtk_widget_destroy ( widget ) }, window , G_CONNECT_SWAPPED ) gtk_container_add ( button_box . reinterpret (), button ); gtk_widget_show_all ( windowWidget ) } fun gtkMain ( args : Array < String >): Int { val app = gtk_application_new ( "org.gtk.example" , G_APPLICATION_FLAGS_NONE ) !! g_signal_connect ( app , "activate" , staticCFunction ( :: activate )) val status = memScoped { g_application_run ( app . reinterpret (), args . size , args . map { it . cstr . getPointer ( memScope ) }. toCValues ()) } g_object_unref ( app ) return status }

You see, it’s just a number of C-style function calls. Let’s try to convert it to a more pleasantly looking Kotlin code.

Object Oriented version

First of all, Kotlin is an object oriented language. GTK+ framework too, in fact. Let’s introduce object hierarchy for widget types used in the example.

abstract class Widget { abstract val widgetPtr : CPointer < GtkWidget > } abstract class Container : Widget () { fun add ( widget : Widget ) = gtk_container_add ( widgetPtr . reinterpret (), widget . widgetPtr ) } class Window ( app : CValuesRef < GtkApplication >): Container () { override val widgetPtr = gtk_application_window_new ( app ) !! private val window get () = widgetPtr . reinterpret < GtkWindow >() var title : String get () = gtk_window_get_title ( window ) set ( value ) { gtk_window_set_title ( window , value ) } fun setDefaultSize ( width : Int , height : Int ) = gtk_window_set_default_size ( window , width , height ) fun showAll () = gtk_widget_show_all ( widgetPtr ) } class ButtonBox ( orientation : GtkOrientation ): Container () { override val widgetPtr = gtk_button_box_new ( orientation ) !! } class Button ( label : String ): Widget () { override val widgetPtr = gtk_button_new_with_label ( label ) !! private val button get () = widgetPtr . reinterpret < GtkButton >() fun onClicked ( handler : GtkButton , callback : CPointer < CFunction <( CPointer < GtkButton >?, gpointer ?) -> Unit >>) { g_signal_connect ( widgetPtr , "clicked" , callback ) } fun <T : Widget> onClicked ( handler : T , callback : CPointer < CFunction <( CPointer < GtkWindow >?, gpointer ?) -> Unit >>) { g_signal_connect ( widgetPtr , "clicked" , callback , handler . widgetPtr , G_CONNECT_SWAPPED ) } }

Here we have basic hierarchy with Widget as the root, Window and ButtonBox both are Container subclasses and Button derived from Widget . title and setDefaultSize belong now to Window class. Note how naturally gtk_window_get_title / gtk_window_set_title method pair is converted to a title property. Button class also features onClicked method encapsulating signal subscription logic. It hasn’t changed much and still doesn’t look good, we’ll return to it later.

Similarly I’ve converted code related to a GtkApplication into an Application class.

class Application ( id : String ) { val app = gtk_application_new ( id , G_APPLICATION_FLAGS_NONE ) !! fun onActivate ( callback : CPointer < CFunction <( CPointer < GtkApplication >?, gpointer ?) -> Unit >>) { g_signal_connect ( app , "activate" , callback ) } fun run ( args : Array < String >): Int { val status = memScoped { g_application_run ( app . reinterpret (), args . size , args . map { it . cstr . getPointer ( memScope ) }. toCValues ()) } g_object_unref ( app ) return status } }

This is how the main method now looks like:

fun gtkMain ( args : Array < String >): Int { val app = Application ( "org.gtk.example" ) app . onActivate ( staticCFunction { app , _ -> val window = Window ( app !! . reinterpret ()) window . title = "Kotlin" window . setDefaultSize ( 200 , 200 ) val buttonBox = ButtonBox ( GtkOrientation . GTK_ORIENTATION_HORIZONTAL ) val button = Button ( "Hello world!" ) button . onClicked ( staticCFunction { widget : CPointer < GtkButton >?, data : gpointer ? -> println ( "Hello Kotlin!" ) }) button . onClicked ( window , staticCFunction { window : CPointer < GtkWindow >?, data : gpointer ? -> gtk_widget_destroy ( window !! . reinterpret ()) }) buttonBox . add ( button ) window . add ( buttonBox ) window . showAll () }) return app . run ( args ) }

Looks much more readable and object-oriented, isn’t it? There are still few things left, however. You have definetely noticed that ugly staticCFunction calls. These are the helpers to pass Kotlin/Native callbacks into C function calls, see interoperability guide. Unfortunately, we cannot pass any bound lambda through the boundary, so if we’d like our signal subscriptions look better we need to workaround it.

Better callbacks

The idea behind the workaround is the following: we will store all handlers in Kotlin and subscribe a static function to an original signal. This callback will then call each handler when invoked. Here is the Signal class which stores handlers. It is a simplified version of Event class from libcurl example.

typealias SignalHandler = () -> Unit class Signal { private var handlers = emptyList < SignalHandler >() operator fun plusAssign ( handler : SignalHandler ) { handlers += handler } operator fun minusAssign ( handler : SignalHandler ) { handlers -= handler } operator fun invoke () { for ( handler in handlers ) { try { handler () } catch ( e : Throwable ) { } } } }

Then we rewrite Button class as follows:

fun signalHandler ( sender : CPointer <*>?, data : COpaquePointer ?) { val button = StableObjPtr . fromValue ( data !! ). get () as Button button . clicked () } class Button ( label : String ): Widget () { override val widgetPtr = gtk_button_new_with_label ( label ) !! init { g_signal_connect ( widgetPtr , "clicked" , staticCFunction ( :: signalHandler ), StableObjPtr . create ( this ). value ) } val clicked = Signal () }

Here we’ve created a static signal handler for "clicked" signal and used it together with Signal object to handle this signal. Button creation code can now be simplified as well:

button . clicked += { println ( "Hello Kotlin!" ) gtk_widget_destroy ( window . widgetPtr ) }

Lambda provided as a signal handler can now capture local variables, so we don’t need to connect "clicked" signal again to handle it in window context. Cool!

UI builder DSL

But this is not the end yet! I’m a big Kotlin DSL lover, so I couldn’t resist adding some Anko style UI builders. They are very simple:

fun CPointer < GtkApplication >. window ( builder : Window .() -> Unit ) { Window ( reinterpret ()). apply ( builder ). showAll () } fun Container . buttonBox ( builder : ButtonBox .() -> Unit ) = add ( ButtonBox ( GtkOrientation . GTK_ORIENTATION_HORIZONTAL ). apply ( builder )) fun ButtonBox . button ( label : String , builder : Button .() -> Unit ) = add ( Button ( label ). apply ( builder ))

But see how nice and concise is the window creation code now!

app !! . window { title = "Kotlin" setDefaultSize ( 200 , 200 ) buttonBox { button ( "Hello World!" ) { clicked += { println ( "Hello Kotlin!" ) this @window . destroy () } } } }

Awesome!

Result

I’ve uploaded the full working code to a Gist.

The proposed solution has several advantages:

it is much more readable

it is statically typed, including signals

it doesn’t expose underlying C function calls (thus it is more portable)

What’s next?

I’m going to create similar bindings for all GTK+ entities and develop some sample application using it to prove that Kotlin can be a great alternative to Vala for GNOME developers.

Stay tuned!