Scoping Java static methods in Kotlin

Question

There's have a Java library's class which has aVeryLongNameThatIDontWantToTypeEveryTime. This class has a few static methods with generic names: get(), abs() etc.

Now I need to construct complicated calls with them in my kotlin code like this one:

aVeryLongNameThatIDontWantToTypeEveryTime.get(aVeryLongNameThatIDontWantToTypeEveryTime.abs(aVeryLongNameThatIDontWantToTypeEveryTime.get(...), aVeryLongNameThatIDontWantToTypeEveryTime.get(...)))

Now, I would like to use a local scoping function in order to not repeat myself so often. However, simply using

with(aVeryLongNameThatIDontWantToTypeEveryTime) {
  get(abs(get(...), get(...)))
}

does not work: It complains that aVeryLongNameThatIDontWantToTypeEveryTime does not have a companion object. (Of course it doesn't, it's a Java class.)

The only "solution" is to globally import aVeryLongNameThatIDontWantToTypeEveryTime.* in the file which isn't great since the method names are so generic and could collide.

Answer 1

You can use import alias to give it locally a more convenient name:

import com.example.aVeryLongNameThatIDontWantToTypeEveryTime as MyShortName

If you prefer your scoped solution then I think the only way right now is to specify your own "scope":

object aVeryLongNameThatIDontWantToTypeEveryTimeScope {
    inline fun get() = aVeryLongNameThatIDontWantToTypeEveryTime.get()
    inline fun set() = aVeryLongNameThatIDontWantToTypeEveryTime.set()
    inline fun abs() = aVeryLongNameThatIDontWantToTypeEveryTime.abs()
}

with (aVeryLongNameThatIDontWantToTypeEveryTimeScope) {
    get()
    set()
    abs()
}

Unfortunately, that requires rewriting all functions, including their parameters.

In the future it could be possible to use Java static members similarly to companion objects. There are similar tasks in Kotlin's YouTrack.