Using default function implementation of interface in Kotlin

Question

I have a Kotlin interface with a default implementation, for instance:

interface Foo {     fun bar(): String {         return "baz"     } } 

This would be okay until I try to implement this interface from Java. When I do, it says the class need to be marked as abstract or implement the method bar(). Also when I try to implement the method, I am unable to call super.bar().

Answer 1

Generating true default methods callable from Java is an experimental feature of Kotlin 1.2.40.

You need to annotate the methods with the @JvmDefault annotation:

interface Foo {     @JvmDefault     fun bar(): String {         return "baz"     } } 

This feature is still disabled by default, you need to pass the -Xjvm-default=enable flag to the compiler for it to work. (If you need to do this in Gradle, see here).

It really is experimental, however. The blog post warns that both design and implementation may change in the future, and at least in my IDE, Java classes are still marked with errors for not implementing these methods, despite compiling and working fine.