How to create a dictionary in Kotlin (code examples included)

In Kotlin, you can create a dictionary by using the Map class as the type of your variable.

To create an instance of the Map class, you can call the mapOf() function and pass the key-value pair as its argument.

Here’s an example of creating a dictionary with String type for the keys and Int type for the values:

val dictionary = mapOf("key" to 1, "anotherKey" to 2)

println(dictionary) // {key=1, anotherKey=2}

You can get the individual value of the dictionary by specifying the key in the index operator.

For example, to grab the value of key:

print(dictionary["key"]) // 1

Creating a mutable map

The Map class is immutable. That means you can’t modify or add more key-value pairs after the initialization.

In the following example, assigning another value to an existing key and adding a new key-value pair triggers an error:

val dictionary = mapOf("key" to 1, "anotherKey" to 2)

dictionary["key"] = 20 // Error: not set method providing array access

dictionary["max"] = 99 // Error: not set method providing array access

To create a mutable dictionary, you need to use the MutableMap class as the blueprint of your dictionary.

The MutableMap instance can be created by calling the mutableMapOf() function.

It accepts the same key-value argument(s) as the mapOf() function:

val mutableDict = mutableMapOf("key" to 1, "anotherKey" to 2)

mutableDict["key"] = 20
mutableDict["max"] = 99

println(mutableDict) // {key=20, anotherKey=2, max=99}

The MutableMap class extends the Map class and adds the write operation method to it.

The MutableMap class also has two subclasses:

• The LinkedHashMap class preserves the insertion order of the key-value pairs
• The HashMap class doesn’t guarantee the insertion order of the key-value pairs

The LinkedHashMap instance can be created using the linkedMapOf() function, while the HashMap instance can be created using hashMapOf() function.

Here’s an example of creating a HashMap dictionary:

val mutableDict = hashMapOf("key" to 1, "anotherKey" to 2)

mutableDict["key"] = 20
mutableDict["max"] = 99

// 👇 The order of the pairs are random
print(mutableDict) // {anotherKey=2, max=99, key=20}

Now you’ve learned how to create a dictionary using Kotlin. Well done! 👍