androidkotlindeferredkotlin-coroutines

Difference between Job and Deferred in Coroutines Kotlin


I am new to coroutines, I understand launch and async but still confusing part is Deferred. What is Deferred? and difference between Job and Deferred. Clear explanation and example is more helpful. Thanks in advance.


Solution

  • So job is sort of an object that represents a coroutine's execution and is related to structured concurrency, e.g. you can cancel a job, and all the children of this job will be also cancelled.

    From docs:

    Job is a cancellable thing with a life-cycle that culminates in its completion.

    Deferred is some kind of analog of Future in Java: in encapsulates an operation that will be finished at some point in future after it's initialization. But is also related to coroutines in Kotlin.

    From documentation:

    Deferred value is a non-blocking cancellable future — it is a Job that has a result.

    So, Deferred is a Job that has a result:

    A deferred value is a Job. A job in the coroutineContext of async builder represents the coroutine itself.

    An example:

    someScope.launch {
        val userJob: Deferred<User> = async(IO) { repository.getUser(id) }
        //some operations, while user is being retrieved 
        val user = userJob.await() //here coroutine will be suspended for a while, and the method `await` is available only from `Deferred` interface
        //do the job with retrieved user
    }
    

    Also, it is possible to structure this async request with an existing scope, but that is a talk of another question.