Concise and type-safe scripting with kotlin

A kotlin script is a way to compile and run Kotlin code easily.
Scripts are a powerful tool when you want to automate any kind of work. The most used languages for scripting tend to be python
or bash/shell but, what if you could get the same task done with Kotlin?
But not just that. What if you had access to any java or kotlin library in your scripts?

With Kscript you can easily do that! Besides it also offers a lot of features.

• Scripts caching: Running the same script will be way faster the second time.
• Maven dependencies
• IntelliJ support
• Bootstrap header
• Check the kscript repo for the full feature set.

Trying it out

Install it with sdk man:

$ sdk install kscript

Now let's create a .kts file and try importing some libraries to create an embedded server:

#!/usr/bin/env kscript

@file:MavenRepository("bintray-ktor","https://dl.bintray.com/kotlin/ktor")
@file:DependsOnMaven("io.ktor:ktor-server-netty:1.2.6")

import io.ktor.application.*
import io.ktor.http.*
import io.ktor.response.*
import io.ktor.routing.*
import io.ktor.server.engine.*
import io.ktor.server.netty.*

println("starting server...")

val server = embeddedServer(Netty, port = 8080) {
  routing {
    get("/") {
      call.respondText("Hello World!", ContentType.Text.Plain)
    }
  }
}
server.start(wait = true)

Now, lets run it!

$ kscript kscript-server.kts

Open your browser on localhost:8080/

Cool, right?

But if you’re like me you probably do most of your work on the IDE. So, let’s try that now.

If you have Intelij Idea on your machine you can type

$ kscript --idea kscript-server.kts 

and it will generate a Gradle Kotlin project with all dependencies declared with the @file convention and add them to a Gradle file.

#Protip: If syntax highlighting is not working properly, just right click on the build.gradle file select Import Gradle project