Enums

Annotating enums

Enums can be easily serialized through their ordinal value. You can use the @KneeEnum annotation to tell the compiler that:

• this native enum is expected to be serialized, so a JVM clone must be generated
• the compiler must serialize and deserialize these types whenever they are part of a callable declaration, e.g. a function argument or return type

In the following example:

kotlin
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@KneeEnum enum class DayOfWeek {
    Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday
}

@Knee fun getCurrentDay(): DayOfWeek = ...

Your JVM code can retrieve the current day with getCurrentDay() and receive a valid DayOfWeek instance back. If you wish to have a different JVM name, use the name parameter:

kotlin
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// Kotlin/Native
@KneeEnum(name = "WeekDay") enum class DayOfWeek { ... }

// Kotlin/JVM
val currentDay: WeekDay = getCurrentDay()

Importing enums

If you wish to annotate existing enums that you don't control, for example those coming from a different module, note that you can use @KneeEnum on type aliases. For example:

kotlin
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@KneeEnum typealias DeprecationLevel = kotlin.DeprecationLevel
@KneeEnum typealias BufferOverflow = kotlinx.coroutines.channels.BufferOverflow

If the declaration is not found on the frontend, a clone will be generated, otherwise the existing declaration will be used.