Kotlin Development

Use http4k's contract pattern to define typed routes and request/response shapes. http4k provides a DSL for declaring HTTP contracts with compile-time safety, eliminating runtime shape mismatches and ensuring your Kotlin services enforce strict type contracts for all endpoints.

Apply extension-based domain conversion patterns with toDomain/fromApi mappings to cleanly separate API schemas from domain models. This approach keeps your Kotlin services maintainable by isolating shape transformations and making null-safety explicit at conversion boundaries.

Yes. TDD workflows integrate naturally with Gradle in Kotlin projects. Write unit and integration tests first, then implement HTTP endpoints and data access logic. This enforces reliable, testable code by making contract violations and domain errors visible before deployment.

Use Result4k for domain errors and Kotlin's explicit ? operator for nullability. Together, they make error handling type-safe and domain-aware, preventing null-pointer exceptions and ensuring all failure paths are handled explicitly in your Kotlin backend.

Adopt 4-space indentation and enforce a 120-character line limit. These conventions improve readability in Kotlin services and make codebases consistent, especially when working with immutable data classes and functional patterns across multiple files.

Yes. Kotlin data classes with copy semantics provide immutable structures that prevent accidental state mutations in HTTP services. Combined with functional patterns, immutable data classes make Kotlin backends easier to test, reason about, and scale reliably.