Annotations

While Kotlin annotations look like Python decorators, they are far less flexible: they can generally only be used for metadata. They are pure data-containing classes, and do not contain any executable code. Some built-in annotations have an effect on the compilation process (such as @JvmStatic), but custom annotations are only useful for providing metadata that can be inspected at runtime by the reflection system. We won't delve deeply into annotations here, but here is an example. The annotations on the annotation declaration itself specify what constructs the annotation may be applied to and whether it is available for runtime inspection.

enum class TestSizes { SMALL, MEDIUM, LARGE }

@Target(AnnotationTarget.CLASS)
@Retention(AnnotationRetention.RUNTIME)
annotation class TestSize(val size: TestSizes)

@TestSize(TestSizes.SMALL)
class Tests { ... }

fun getTestSize(cls: KClass<*>): TestSizes? =
    cls.findAnnotation<TestSize>()?.size

println(getTestSize(Tests::class))

This material was written by Aasmund Eldhuset; it is owned by Khan Academy and is licensed for use under CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 US. Please note that this is not a part of Khan Academy's official product offering.