Expose Feature.defaultOption "statically" through companion object

[AlexKrupa]

Currently to access a feature's default option you need one of its existing options, e.g.

AuthType.Retina.defaultOption

where the Retina part is only misleading because it's irrelevant — defaultOption could return AuthType.Fingerprint.

I'd prefer to access it "statically" to avoid hardcoding the irrelevant option e.g.

AuthType.defaultOption

There is a workaround, but it has the disadvantage of being a top-level function instead of being accessible through a feature:

inline fun <reified T> defaultOption(): T where T : Feature<T>, T : Enum<T> =
  enumValues<T>().first().defaultOption

val default = defaultOption<AuthType>()

Any design considerations I could be missing here?

[MiSikora]

There is no way to require it in a contract. Classes cannot be forced to have a companion object, so it cannot be provided in the base library. This could only be done via code generation as a "bonus". But I wouldn't want to have it in the core generator engine. I could imagine a feature for others to hook into generation process to modify the output as they wish. But ATM this seems like an overkill for this simple feature request.

There is an extension on Class<Feature<T>>, which allows you to use it like this YourFeature::class.java.defaultOption. You can shorten it to KClass with an extension wrapper.

public val <T : Feature<out T>> KClass<out T>.defaultOption: T
    get() = java.defaultOption

[AlexKrupa]

Sounds reasonable, thanks. I guess this idea could be revisited after statics.

---

The top-level function actually turned out just fine for us — most often type inference makes it simpler than a namespaced alternative.

class State(val authType: AuthType)

val initialState = State(authType = defaultOption())