Measured: intuitive, type-safe units.

Measured provides a safe and simple way to work with units of measure. It uses the compiler to ensure correctness, and provides intuitive, mathematical operations to work with any units. This means you can write more robust code that avoids implicit units. Time handling for example, is often done with implicit assumptions about milliseconds vs microseconds or seconds. Measured helps you avoid pitfalls like these.

interface Clock {
    fun now(): Measure<Time>
}

fun handleUpdate(duration: Measure<Time>) {
    // ...
    reportTimeInMillis(duration `in` milliseconds)
}

val startTime = clock.now()

//...

handleUpdate(clock.now() - startTime)

Complex Units

Use division and multiplication to create compound measures. Convert between these safely and easily with the as and in methods.

val velocity     = 5 * meters / seconds
val acceleration = 9 * meters / (seconds * seconds)
val time         = 1 * minutes

//  d = vt + ½at²
val distance     = velocity * time + 1.0/2 * acceleration * time * time

println(distance                ) // 16500 m
println(distance `as` kilometers) // 16.5 km
println(distance `as` miles     ) // 10.25262467191601 mi

println(5 * miles / hours `as` meters / seconds) // 2.2352 m/s

The as method converts a Measure from its current Unit to another. The result is another Measure. While in returns the magnitude of a Measure in the given Unit.

Avoid Raw Values

Measure's support of math operators helps you avoid working with raw values directly.

val marathon              = 26 * miles
val velocity              = 3 * kilometers / hours
val timeToRunHalfMarathon = (marathon / 2) / velocity // 6.973824 hr

typealias Velocity = UnitRatio<Length, Time>

fun calculateTime(distance: Measure<Length>, velocity: Measure<Velocity>): Measure<Time> {
    return velocity * distance
}

Extensible

You can easily add new units and have them work like those that ship with the library.

Installation

Doodle apps are built using Gradle, like other Kotlin Multi-Platform projects. Learn more by checking out the Kotlin docs.

build.gradle.kts

// ...

repositories {
    mavenCentral()
}

// ...

kotlin {
    // ...
    dependencies {
        implementation ("io.nacular.measured:measured:$measuredVersion")
    }
}

Current Limitations

Measured uses Kotlin's type system to enable compile-time validation. This works really well in most cases, but there are things the type system currently does not support. For example, Units and Measures are order-sensitive.

val a: UnitProduct<Angle, Time> = radians * seconds
val b: UnitProduct<Time, Angle> = seconds * radians

!> Notice the types for a and b are different

This can be mitigated on a case by case basis with explicit extension functions that help with order. For example, you can ensure that kg is sorted before m by providing the following extension.

// ensure Mass comes before Length when Length * Mass
operator fun Length.times(mass: Mass) = mass * this

val f1 = 1 * (kilograms * meters) / (seconds * seconds)
val f2 = 1 * (meters * kilograms) / (seconds * seconds)

// f1 and f2 now have the same type

You can also define an extension on Measure to avoid needing parentheses around kilograms and meters.

// ensure Mass comes before Length when Measure<Length> multiplied by Mass
operator fun Measure<Length>.times(mass: Mass) = amount * (unit * mass)

Measured currently only supports linear units where all members of a given unit are related by a single magnitude. This applies to many units, but Fahrenheit and Celsius are examples of temperature units that requires more than a multiplier for conversion.

Contact

• Please see issues to share bugs you find, make feature requests, or just get help with your questions.
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