Mastering Kotlin Coroutines: From Basics to Advanced

Unlock the full potential of asynchronous programming with Kotlin coroutines in this comprehensive codelab. Dive into the essentials of coroutines, from understanding the basics and comparing them to traditional threads to mastering suspending functions and the async-await pattern. Explore advanced topics like coroutine builders, coroutine jobs, scopes, and contexts, including the effective use of various dispatchers. Learn how to facilitate communication between coroutines using channels and flows, handle cancellations and exceptions robustly, and test your coroutine-based code for reliability. This codelab also covers performance optimization and best practices, ensuring you write efficient, maintainable coroutine code that enhances the responsiveness and efficiency of your applications.

Codelab Objectives

In this codelab, you’ll explore:

  • What Is Asynchronous Programming?
  • Understand the Basics of Coroutines 
  • Threads vs. Coroutines
  • Concept of Suspending Functions
  • The Async and Await Pattern
  • Exploring Coroutine Builders: launch, async, and runBlocking
  • Understanding Structured Concurrency in Kotlin Coroutines
  • Coroutine Job: Child-parent Hierarchy and SupervisorJob
  • Coroutine Scopes and its customization
  • Coroutine Contexts: Switching Contexts and Managing Threads 
  • Understand and Use Kotlin Dispatchers: Default, IO, Main, Unconfined 
  • Communication Between Coroutines: Channels and Flows
  • Handle Coroutine Cancellation and Exceptions
  • Testing Coroutines
  • Performance and Best Practices

Codelab Content

Meet the instructor

Amanda Hinchman-Dominguez

Content Author & Course Instructor

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