How to use dynamic string substitution in Kotlin?

Question

I'm looking for a Kotlin way to do a dynamic values substitution into a string. It is clear how to implement it, just want to check if there is something similar in standard library.

Could you help me to find a function which given template and data map returns a resulting string with all template keys replaced with their values?

fun format(template: String, data: Map<String, Any>): String { /* magic */ }

format("${a} ${b} ${a}", mapOf("a" to "Home", "b" to "Sweet))   // -> "Home Sweet Home"

Answer 1

I did not find any thing standard to solve the problem.

So here is a balanced (readability/performance/extensibility) solution also handling cases when some substitutions are undefined in dataMap.

makeString("\${a} # \${b} @ \${c}", mapOf("a" to 123, "c" to "xyz"))   // => "123 # ??? @ xyz"

--

object Substitutions {
    private val pattern = Pattern.compile("\\$\\{([^}]+)\\}")

    fun makeString(
        template: String, 
        dataMap: Map<String, Any?>, 
        undefinedStub: String = "???"
    ): String {
        val replacer = createReplacer(dataMap, undefinedStub)
        val messageParts = splitWithDelimiters(template, pattern, replacer)
        return messageParts.joinToString("")
    }

    private fun createReplacer(dataMap: Map<String, Any?>, stub: String): (Matcher) -> String {
        return { m ->
            val key = m.group(1)
            (dataMap[key] ?: stub).toString()
        }
    }

    private fun splitWithDelimiters(
        text: String,
        pattern: Pattern,
        matchTransform: (Matcher) -> String
    ): List<String> {
        var lastMatch = 0
        val items = mutableListOf<String>()
        val m = pattern.matcher(text)

        while (m.find()) {
            items.add(text.substring(lastMatch, m.start()))
            items.add(matchTransform(m))
            lastMatch = m.end()
        }

        items.add(text.substring(lastMatch))

        return items
    }
}