{"id":98,"date":"2019-11-28T13:35:00","date_gmt":"2019-11-28T12:35:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.codemotion.com\/magazine\/kotlin-loves-react\/"},"modified":"2020-06-12T14:00:27","modified_gmt":"2020-06-12T12:00:27","slug":"kotlin-loves-react","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.codemotion.com\/magazine\/frontend\/mobile-dev\/kotlin-loves-react\/","title":{"rendered":"Kotlin loves React"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the beginning were the webmasters, who knew about PHP and JavaScript. Then front-end and back-end tribes, and each followed their own path, differentiating and specialising. Finally, new programming languages<\/span> \u200b\u200band frameworks arrived, with the promise to write concise and expressive code, in safe mode.<\/p>\n

Among the technologies<\/span> that have emerged in recent years are, in particular, Kotlin<\/span> and React. Developed internally by Jetbrains and Facebook respectively, released open-source and adopted by big companies all over the world, the two projects were born with similar purposes – offer a language \/ framework that allows to develop with more simplicity – and initially they were placed at the antipodes of the computer science rainbow. Kotlin<\/span>, born to be an alternative to Java<\/span>, wants to be an industrial-strength object-oriented language; React extends the JavaScript<\/span> standard features to build user interfaces (within both browser and mobile OSs).<\/p>\n

Two incompatible worlds? Not at all, two complementary worlds that, thanks to Kotlin<\/span>‘s multi-platform peculiarities, are co-existing as a practical and winning solution to write both (web-based) front-ends and back-ends using one language.<\/p>\n

A valid alternative on server side<\/h2>\n

At Codemotion Milan 2018<\/a>, Davide Cerbo<\/a> has introduced the advantages of using Kotlin<\/span> for the realization of full-stack<\/span> projects<\/span>, showing how effective, in particular, is the current Kotlin<\/span>-React combination.<\/p>\n

Kotlin<\/span> is a modern language for modern multi-platform applications. It is characterised in particular by the concise syntax and to be easily adopted by those who already know Java<\/span> (it is not by chance that it runs on the JVM), but at the same time to offer some interesting solutions to carry out more solid projects<\/span>. An example is the distinction between nullable and non-nullable data types and the obligation to use “null-safe” operators for nullable objects.<\/p>\n

It is a language particularly suited for server side programming. Due to its JVM-based nature, it allows gradually migrating large codebases from Java<\/span> to Kotlin<\/span>, relying on existing frameworks such as Spring or Java EE Http<\/span> servlets.<\/p>\n

Recently, however, it has added the ability of transpilling the Kotlin<\/span> code into JavaScript<\/span>, in particular client-side JavaScript<\/span>.<\/p>\n

Modern web with Kotlin and React<\/h2>\n

Kotlin<\/span>\u2019s attention to the JavaScript<\/span> world and in particular client-side JavaScript<\/span> on browsers, manifests itself on several fronts. For example, in the DSL to build HTML<\/span> in the DOM and in its ability to generate JavaScript<\/span> that is compatible with the Asynchronous Module Definition (AMD), the CommonJS and the Universal Model Definition (UMD).<\/p>\n