Kotlin Standard Library Cookbook

Introduction

The book «Kotlin Standard Library Cookbook» by Samuel Urbanowicz was published in 2018 and immediately attracted the attention of developers seeking to master the Kotlin standard library at a professional level. Unlike many textbooks that only superficially introduce syntax, this collection of recipes offers practical solutions to real-world problems — from working with collections to asynchronous programming with coroutines. The volume of the publication is 296 pages, which is optimal for diving into the topic without unnecessary filler.

What the book is about

The book is structured as a set of independent recipes grouped into thematic chapters. Each recipe contains a problem statement, a ready-made solution in Kotlin, and a detailed explanation of how and why it works. The main topics covered include:

• Working with collections and sequences (Sequence, List, Set, Map);
• Functional primitives: closures, lambdas, higher-order functions;
• Data serialization and deserialization (JSON, XML);
• Asynchronous programming with coroutines (launch, async, Channel, Flow);
• Working with dates, time, and strings;
• Interoperability with Java and using Java libraries from Kotlin;
• Code testing and debugging.

Who this book is for

The publication is aimed at developers already familiar with the basics of Kotlin (syntax, types, basic constructs) who want to deepen their knowledge specifically in the standard library.