Implementing observable properties that can also serialize in Kotlin

Question

I'm trying to build a class where certain values are Observable but also Serializable.

This obviously works and the serialization works, but it's very boilerplate-heavy having to add a setter for every single field and manually having to call change(...) inside each setter:

interface Observable {

    fun change(message: String) {
        println("changing $message")
    }
}

@Serializable
class BlahVO : Observable {

    var value2: String = ""
        set(value) {
            field = value
            change("value2")
        }

    fun toJson(): String {
        return Json.encodeToString(serializer(), this)
    }
}

println(BlahVO().apply { value2 = "test2" }) correctly outputs

changing value2
{"value2":"test2"}

I've tried introducing Delegates:

interface Observable {

    fun change(message: String) {
        println("changing $message")
    }

    
    @Suppress("ClassName")
    class default<T>(defaultValue: T) {

        private var value: T = defaultValue

        operator fun getValue(observable: Observable, property: KProperty<*>): T {
            return value
        }

        operator fun setValue(observable: Observable, property: KProperty<*>, value: T) {
            this.value = value
            observable.change(property.name)
        }

    }

}

@Serializable
class BlahVO : Observable {

    var value1: String by Observable.default("value1")

    fun toJson(): String {
        return Json.encodeToString(serializer(), this)
    }
}

println(BlahVO().apply { value1 = "test1" }) correctly triggers change detection, but it doesn't serialize:

changing value1
{}

If I go from Observable to ReadWriteProperty,

interface Observable {

    fun change(message: String) {
        println("changing $message")
    }

    fun <T> look(defaultValue: T): ReadWriteProperty<Observable, T> {
        return OP(defaultValue, this)
    }

    class OP<T>(defaultValue: T, val observable: Observable) : ObservableProperty<T>(defaultValue) {
        override fun setValue(thisRef: Any?, property: KProperty<*>, value: T) {
            super.setValue(thisRef, property, value)
            observable.change("blah!")
        }
    }
}

@Serializable
class BlahVO : Observable {

    var value3: String by this.look("value3")

    fun toJson(): String {
        return Json.encodeToString(serializer(), this)
    }
}

the result is the same:

changing blah!
{}

Similarly for Delegates.vetoable

var value4: String by Delegates.vetoable("value4", {
        property: KProperty<*>, oldstring: String, newString: String ->
    this.change(property.name)
    true
})

outputs:

changing value4
{}

Delegates just doesn't seem to work with Kotlin Serialization

What other options are there to observe a property's changes without breaking its serialization that will also work on other platforms (KotlinJS, KotlinJVM, Android, ...)?

Answer 1

Serialization and Deserialization of Kotlin Delegates is not supported by kotlinx.serialization as of now.
There is an open issue #1578 on GitHub regarding this feature.

According to the issue you can create an intermediate data-transfer object, which gets serialized instead of the original object. Also you could write a custom serializer to support the serialization of Kotlin Delegates, which seems to be even more boilerplate, then writing custom getters and setters, as proposed in the question.

---

Data Transfer Object

By mapping your original object to a simple data transfer object without delegates, you can utilize the default serialization mechanisms. This also has the nice side effect to cleanse your data model classes from framework specific annotations, such as @Serializable.

class DataModel {
    var observedProperty: String by Delegates.observable("initial") { property, before, after ->
        println("""Hey, I changed "${property.name}" from "$before" to "$after"!""")
    }

    fun toJson(): String {
        return Json.encodeToString(serializer(), this.toDto())
    }
}

fun DataModel.toDto() = DataTransferObject(observedProperty)

@Serializable
class DataTransferObject(val observedProperty: String)

fun main() {
    val data = DataModel()
    println(data.toJson())
    data.observedProperty = "changed"
    println(data.toJson())
}

This yields the following result:

{"observedProperty":"initial"}
Hey, I changed "observedProperty" from "initial" to "changed"!
{"observedProperty":"changed"}

---

Custom data type

If changing the data type is an option, you could write a wrapping class which gets (de)serialized transparently. Something along the lines of the following might work.

@Serializable
class ClassWithMonitoredString(val monitoredProperty: MonitoredString) {
    fun toJson(): String {
        return Json.encodeToString(serializer(), this)
    }
}

fun main() {
    val monitoredString = obs("obsDefault") { before, after ->
        println("""I changed from "$before" to "$after"!""")
    }
    
    val data = ClassWithMonitoredString(monitoredString)
    println(data.toJson())
    data.monitoredProperty.value = "obsChanged"
    println(data.toJson())
}

Which yields the following result:

{"monitoredProperty":"obsDefault"}
I changed from "obsDefault" to "obsChanged"!
{"monitoredProperty":"obsChanged"}

You however lose information about which property changed, as you don't have easy access to the field name. Also you have to change your data structures, as mentioned above and might not be desirable or even possible. In addition, this work only for Strings for now, even though one might make it more generic though. Also, this requires a lot of boilerplate to start with. On the call site however, you just have to wrap the actual value in an call to obs. I used the following boilerplate to get it to work.

typealias OnChange = (before: String, after: String) -> Unit

@Serializable(with = MonitoredStringSerializer::class)
class MonitoredString(initialValue: String, var onChange: OnChange?) {
    var value: String = initialValue
        set(value) {
            onChange?.invoke(field, value)

            field = value
        }

}

fun obs(value: String, onChange: OnChange? = null) = MonitoredString(value, onChange)

object MonitoredStringSerializer : KSerializer<MonitoredString> {
    override val descriptor: SerialDescriptor = PrimitiveSerialDescriptor("MonitoredString", PrimitiveKind.STRING)

    override fun serialize(encoder: Encoder, value: MonitoredString) {
        encoder.encodeString(value.value)
    }

    override fun deserialize(decoder: Decoder): MonitoredString {
        return MonitoredString(decoder.decodeString(), null)
    }
}