INTRODUCTION TO COROUTINES
IN KOTLIN
Abhishek Bansal
Lead Android Developer
DoctorBox Health
AGENDA
• What are Coroutines
• Coroutines and Threads
• “suspend” modifier in Kotlin
• Coroutine Builders
• Structured Concurrency- Coroutine Scope
• Demo
WHAT ARE COROUTINES?
• Traditions first!
Source: https://kotlinlang.org/docs/reference/coroutines/basics.html
WHAT ARE COROUTINES?
• First coined in 1958 by Melvin Conway
• As per wikipedia
• Coroutines are computer-program components that generalize subroutines for non-
preemptive multitasking, by allowing multiple entry points for suspending and resuming
execution at certain locations.
WHAT ARE COROUTINES?
• A way of writing non-blocking asynchronous code
• Provide concurrency
• Allow passing control to each other while maintaining state
• i.e. coroutine can return back to caller while maintaining its own state and allows caller to
return back to it and resume its execution
COROUTINES AND THREADS
• Loosely speaking
• Coroutines are essentially lightweight threads!
import kotlinx.coroutines.*
fun main() = runBlocking { // blocks till all of the children coroutines finish execution
repeat(100_000) { // launch a lot of coroutines
launch {
delay(1000L)
print(".")
}
}
}
Source: https://kotlinlang.org/docs/reference/coroutines/basics.html
COROUTINES AND THREADS
• But Conceptually
• Coroutines are not threads! (Not at all)
COROUTINES AND THREADS
• Coroutines provide concurrency but not parallelism
• Scheduling is non-preemptive and is done by language/programmer
• Super efficient
• No context switching
• No extra stack space
• No synchronization needed
• Threads are always global, coroutines are scoped
suspend MODIFIER
• suspend modifier allows a method to be launched in a coroutine
• Methods marked with suspend can only be called from a coroutine or a
method marked as suspend
• Example
• https://medium.com/@elye.project/understanding-suspend-function-of-coroutines-
de26b070c5ed
COROUTINE BUILDERS
• Coroutine builders are functions that take suspending lambda as arguments
create coroutines and then optionally return their result.
• Can be invoked from regular non suspending functions
• Available in kotlinx.coroutines by jetbrains
(https://github.com/kotlin/kotlinx.coroutines)
• Example:
• launch{} – executes a coroutine and returns a Job object
• Async{}- executes a coroutine and returns Deferred<T> object, call await() to get T
• runBlocking{}- blocks current thread till execution of wrapped block completes
COROUTINE SCOPE
• Each coroutine is scoped, unlike threads
• Can be global or user defined
• Each coroutine builder is an extension function on CoroutineScope
• GlobalScope can be used to launch coroutines in Application Scope
• Having well defined scope and lifecycle brings structure to concurrency
provided by coroutines which is not possible for threads.
DEMO
https://github.com/abhishekBansal/coroutine-mvvm-architecture-demo
FURTHER READINGS/REFERENCES
• https://kotlinlang.org/docs/reference/coroutines/basics.html
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coroutine
• https://android.jlelse.eu/coroutines-basic-terminologies-and-usage-b4242bd1b2a4
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3agLJQ6vt8
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hfBv0a09Jc
• Useful stackoverflow discussions
• https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1050222/what-is-the-difference-between-concurrency-
and-parallelism
• https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1934715/difference-between-a-coroutine-and-a-
thread
• https://stackoverflow.com/questions/553704/what-is-a-coroutine
• https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/coroutines-in-c-cpp/
THANK YOU
QUESTIONS?
Any Feedback?
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