Anko: The Ultimate Ninja of Kotlin Libraries? • Kai Koenig • YOW! 2016

ANKO is a Kotlin library for Android development that aims to reduce boilerplate code and make development faster and easier

Key features include:

• Layout DSL to replace XML layouts with Kotlin code
• SQLite database handling with reduced boilerplate
• Async task handling with simplified syntax
• Intent and service wrappers
• Configuration qualifiers for conditional code execution

ANKO’s Layout DSL advantages:

• More concise than XML layouts
• Type-safe building of UI components
• Better compile-time error checking
• Can separate UI code into component classes

ANKO leverages important Kotlin features:

• Extension functions
• Type-safe builders
• Lambda expressions
• Data classes

Alternatives to consider:

• Kandroid for more Android-specific extensions
• Covenant for more complex promise-based async operations
• XML layouts for simpler cases

Production readiness:

• Very stable despite being pre-1.0
• Active development and improvement
• Used extensively by JetBrains internally
• Apache licensed and open source
• Good tooling support in Android Studio/IntelliJ

Integration:

• Simple Gradle dependency addition
• Modular design allows picking specific features
• Works with both activities and fragments
• Can incorporate existing XML layouts