Riccardo Cardin
21 min read •
Functional Error Handling in Kotlin: Part 1 - Absent Values
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Introduction
The Kotlin language is a multi-paradigm, general-purpose programming language. Whether we develop using an object-oriented or functional approach, we always have the problem of handling errors. Kotlin offers a lot of different methods to handle errors. Still, this article will focus on the functional approaches and introduce the Arrow library. This article is the first part of a series. We’ll focus on strategies that deal with the error without managing its cause, i.e., nullable types and Arrow Option types. So, without further ado, let’s get started.
Setup
Let’s first create the setup we’ll use throughout the article as usual. We’ll use the last version of Kotlin available at the moment of writing, version 1.8.20.
As we said, we will use the Arrow libraries. Arrow adds functional types to the Kotlin standard library. In detail, we’ll use the core library. Here, it is the dependency we need:
<dependency>
<groupId>io.arrow-kt</groupId>
<artifactId>arrow-core</artifactId>
<version>1.1.5</version>
<type>pom</type>
</dependency>
We’ll use Maven to build the project. You’ll find the complete pom.xml file at the end of the article.
Why Exception Handling is Not Functional
First, we need to understand what’s wrong with the traditional approach to error handling, which is based on exceptions. We need some context to understand the problem.
Imagine we want to create an application that manages a job board. First, we need a simplified model of a job:
data class Job(val id: JobId, val company: Company, val role: Role, val salary: Salary)
@JvmInline
value class JobId(val value: Long)
@JvmInline
value class Company(val name: String)
@JvmInline
value class Role(val name: String)
@JvmInline
value class Salary(val value: Double) {
operator fun compareTo(other: Salary): Int = value.compareTo(other.value)
}
Then, we can simulate a database of jobs using a Map<JobId, Job>:
val JOBS_DATABASE: Map<JobId, Job> = mapOf(
JobId(1) to Job(
JobId(1),
Company("Apple, Inc."),
Role("Software Engineer"),
Salary(70_000.00),
),
JobId(2) to Job(
JobId(2),
Company("Microsoft"),
Role("Software Engineer"),
Salary(80_000.00),
),
JobId(3) to Job(
JobId(3),
Company("Google"),
Role("Software Engineer"),
Salary(90_000.00),
),
)
We can use a dedicated module to retrieve the job information. As a first operation, we want to retrieve a job by its id:
interface Jobs {
fun findById(id: JobId): Job
}
Let’s start with a trivial implementation of the Jobs interface:
class LiveJobs : Jobs {
override fun findById(id: JobId): Job {
val maybeJob: Job? = JOBS_DATABASE[id]
if (maybeJob != null) {
return maybeJob
} else {
throw NoSuchElementException("Job not found")
}
}
}
When the job was not found, we threw a NoSuchElementException. Easy peasy.
Now that we have our Jobs module, we can use it in a program. Let’s say we want to retrieve the salary associated with a particular job. The program is straightforward, but it’s enough to show the problem:
class JobsService(private val jobs: Jobs) {
fun retrieveSalary(id: JobId): Double {
val job = jobs.findById(id)
return try {
job.salary.value
} catch (e: Exception) {
0.0
}
}
}
Now, let’s see what happens when we run the program for a job that doesn’t exist:
fun main() {
val jobs: Jobs = LiveJobs()
val jobsService = JobsService(jobs)
val jobId: Long = 42
val salary = jobsService.retrieveSalary(JobId(jobId))
println("The salary of the job $jobId is $salary")
}
As expected, the program crashes with the following exception:
Exception in thread "main" java.util.NoSuchElementException: Job not found
at in.rcard.exception.LiveJobs.findById-aQvFPlM(ExceptionErrorHandling.kt:17)
at in.rcard.exception.JobsService.retrieveSalary-aQvFPlM(ExceptionErrorHandling.kt:24)
at in.rcard.MainKt.main(Main.kt:12)
at in.rcard.MainKt.main(Main.kt)
Fair enough. The exception is thrown outside the try-catch block and bubbles up to the main method.
One of the main principles of functional programming is referential transparency, which states that a function should always return the same result when called with the same arguments. In other words, a function should not have any side effects. One of the results of this principle is that an expression can be replaced with its value without changing the program’s behavior.
Let’s try it on our program. If we substitute the jobs.findById(42) expression to the job variable in the retrieveSalarymethod, we get the following code:
fun retrieveSalary(id: JobId): Double {
val job: Job = throw NoSuchElementException("Job not found")
return try {
job.salary.value
} catch (e: Exception) {
0.0
}
}
As expected, we obtained a program that crashes with the same exception. However, if we move the retrieval of the job inside the try-catch block, we get the following code:
fun retrieveSalary(id: JobId): Double {
return try {
val job = jobs.findById(id)
job.salary.value
} catch (e: Exception) {
0.0
}
}
If we execute this code in our program, we obtain a different result than the previous execution. In fact, the exception is now caught by the try-catch block, and the program generates the following output.
The salary of the job 42 is 0.0
We’ve just proven that exceptions don’t follow the substitution principle. In other words, exceptions are not referentially transparent and, for this reason, are considered a side effect. In other words, an expression throwing exceptions can’t be reasoned about without a context of execution, aka the code around the expression. So, when we use the expression, we also lose the locality of reasoning and add a lot of cognitive loads to understand the code.
Moreover, there is one more aspect we would like to change about exceptions. Let’s take the signature of the retrieveSalary method:
fun retrieveSalary(id: JobId): Double
We expect the method to take a job id as input and return a salary as a Double. No reference to the exception is present in the signature. As developers, we want the compilers to help us avoid errors. However, in this case, we’re not aware that the method can throw an exception, and the compiler can not help us in any way. The only place we become aware of the exception is during runtime execution, which is a bit late.
Somebody can say that the JVM also has checked exceptions and that we can use them to avoid the problem. However, Kotlin doesn’t have checked exceptions. Let’s try to act as if it has them. If a method declares to throw a checked exception, the compiler will force us to handle it. But, checked exceptions don’t work well with higher-order functions, which are fundamental to functional programming. In fact, if we want to use a higher-order function together with checked exceptions, we need to declare the exception in the signature of the lambda function, which is not feasible. Take the map function of any collection type:
fun <A, B> map(list: List<A>, f: (A) -> B): List<B>
As we might guess, using checked exceptions for the function f is impossible since it must stay generic. The only possible way is to add some generic exception to the function’s signature, such as an Exception, which is useless.
So, we understood that we need a better approach to handle errors, at least in functional programming. Let’s see how we can do it.
Handling Errors with Nullable Types
Suppose we’re not interested in the cause of the error. In that case, we can model that an operation failed by returning a null value. In other languages returning a null is not considered a best practice. However, in Kotlin, the null check is built-in the language, and the compiler can help us to avoid errors. In Kotlin, we have nullable types. A nullable type is a type that can be either a value of the class or null. For example, the type String? is a nullable type, and it can be either a String or null.
When we work with nullable types, the compiler forces us to handle the case when the value is null. For example, let’s change our primary example, handling errors using nullable types. First, we redefined the Jobs interface and its implementation to use nullable types:
interface Jobs {
fun findById(id: JobId): Job?
}
class LiveJobs : Jobs {
override fun findById(id: JobId): Job? = try {
JOBS_DATABASE[id]
} catch (e: Exception) {
null
}
}
As we said, using nullable types to handle failures means completely losing the cause of the error, which is not propagated in any way to the caller.
Then, we also change the JobsService, and we try to use the dereference operator . to access the salary property of the Job object directly:
class JobsService(private val jobs: Jobs) {
fun retrieveSalary(id: JobId): Double =
jobs.findById(id).salary.value
}
If we try to compile the code, we get the following error:
Compilation failure
[ERROR] /functional-error-handling-in-kotlin/src/main/kotlin/in/rcard/nullable/NullableTypeErrorHandling.kt:[21,26] Only safe (?.) or non-null asserted (!!.) calls are allowed on a nullable receiver of type Job?
The compiler is warning us that we forgot to handle the case where the list is null. As we can see, the compiler is helping us to avoid errors. Let’s fix the code:
fun retrieveSalary(id: JobId): Double =
jobs.findById(id)?.salary?.value ?: 0.0
Here, we used the ?. operator to call a method on a nullable object only if it’s not null. We must use the ?. operator for every method call if we have a chain of calls. Finally, we use the “Elvis” operator, ?:, as a fallback value, in case the job is null.
At first, using a nullable value seems less composable than using, for example, the Java Optional type. This last type has a lot of functions, map, flatMap, or filter, which make it easy to compose and chain operations.
Kotlin nullable types have nothing to envy to the Java Optional type. In fact, the Kotlin standard library provides a lot of functions to handle nullable types. For example, the Optional.map function is equivalent to the let scoping function:
// Kotlin SDK
public inline fun <T, R> T.let(block: (T) -> R): R {
contract {
callsInPlace(block, InvocationKind.EXACTLY_ONCE)
}
return block(this)
}
The let function takes a lambda function as input, applying it to the receiver type, and returning the result, as the map function (ed., contracts is a powerful tool of the language to give the compiler some hints).
To build an example, let’s say that the salary of our jobs is in USD, and we want to convert it to EUR. We need a new service to do that:
class CurrencyConverter {
fun convertUsdToEur(amount: Double): Double = amount * 0.91
}
We can pass the new service to the JobsService and use it to get the salary in EUR for a job:
class JobsService(private val jobs: Jobs, private val converter: CurrencyConverter) {
// Omissis...
fun retrieveSalaryInEur(id: JobId): Double =
jobs.findById(id)?.let { converter.convertUsdToEur(it.salary.value) } ?: 0.0
}
We can easily map a nullable value by mixing up the let function with the ?. operator. Similarly, we can simulate the filter function on a nullable value. We’ll use the ?. operator and the takeIf function in this case. So, let’s add a new function to our service that returns if a job is an Apple job:
fun isAppleJob(id: JobId): Boolean =
jobs.findById(id)?.takeIf { it.company.name == "Apple" } != null
As we can see, we used the takeIf in association with the ?. operator to filter the nullable value. The takeIf is an extension function that receives a lambda predicate as a parameter and applies the lambda to the receiver type (not the nullable type):
// Kotlin SDK
@OptIn(ExperimentalContracts::class)
public inline fun <T> T.takeIf(predicate: (T) -> Boolean): T? {
contract {
callsInPlace(predicate, InvocationKind.EXACTLY_ONCE)
}
return if (predicate(this)) this else null
}
Now, we can change the main method to use the new function:
fun main() {
val jobs: Jobs = LiveJobs()
val currencyConverter = CurrencyConverter()
val jobsService = JobsService(jobs, currencyConverter)
val appleJobId = JobId(1)
val isAppleJob = jobsService.isAppleJob(appleJobId)
println("Q: Is the job with id $appleJobId an Apple job?\nA: $isAppleJob")
}
If we run the program, we get the expected output:
Q: Is the job with id JobId(value=1) an Apple job?
A: false
Although the ?. operator and the let function are extremely powerful, ending with a code with many nested calls is pretty straightforward. For example, let’s create a function in our service that returns the sum of the salaries of two jobs:
fun sumSalaries(jobId1: JobId, jobId2: JobId): Double? {
val maybeJob1: Job? = jobs.findById(jobId1)
val maybeJob2: Job? = jobs.findById(jobId2)
return maybeJob1?.let { job1 ->
maybeJob2?.let { job2 ->
job1.salary.value + job2.salary.value
}
}
}
To overcome the above problem, we can use some sweet functionalities provided by the Kotlin Arrow library. We already imported the dependency from Arrow in the setup section, so we can use it in our code.
The Arrow library provides a lot of functional programming constructs. In detail, for error handling, it provides a uniform form of monadic list-comprehension (in Scala, it’s called for-comprehension) that allows us to write functional code more imperatively and declaratively and avoid the nested calls.
The Arrow DSL applies the same syntax for all the types we can use to handle errors, and it’s based on the concept of continuations.
For nullable type, Arrow offers the nullable DSL. We can access helpful functions inside the DSL, such as the ensureNotNull function and the bind extension function. Let’s rewrite the sumSalaries function using the nullable DSL, adding a few logs that we’ll use to understand what’s going on:
import arrow.core.raise.*
fun sumSalaries2(jobId1: JobId, jobId2: JobId): Double? = nullable {
println("Searching for the job with id $jobId1")
val job1: Job = jobs.findById(jobId1).bind()
println("Job found: $job1")
println("Searching for the job with id $jobId2")
val job2: Job = ensureNotNull(jobs.findById(jobId2))
println("Job found: $job2")
job1.salary.value + job2.salary.value
}
As we can see, the two functions extract the value from the nullable type. If the value is null, then the nullable block returns null immediately. In the version 2.0 of Arrow, the nullable DSL manages both normal and suspend functions inside.
We can give the function a job id that doesn’t exist, and then we can check its behavior:
fun main() {
val jobs: Jobs = LiveJobs()
val currencyConverter = CurrencyConverter()
val jobsService = JobsService(jobs, currencyConverter)
val salarySum = jobsService.sumSalaries2(JobId(42), JobId(2)) ?: 0.0
println("The sum of the salaries using 'sumSalaries' is $salarySum")
}
The output of the program is the following:
Searching for the job with id JobId(value=42)
The sum of the salaries using 'sumSalaries' is 0.0
As we might expect, the function returns null immediately after searching for the JobId(42) returns null.
Although nullable types offer a reasonable degree of compositionality and full support by the Kotlin language, there are some cases when you can’t use it to handle errors. There are some domains where the null value is valid, and we can’t use it to represent an error. Other times, we need to work with some external libraries that don’t support nullable types, such as RxJava or the project Reactor.
Fortunately, Kotlin and the Arrow library provide a lot of alternatives to handle errors functionally. Let’s start with the Option type.
Handling Errors with Option
Unlike Java, Kotlin doesn’t provide a type for handling optional values. As we saw in the previous section, Kotlin creators preferred introducing nullable values instead of having an Option<T> type.
We can add optional types to the language using the Arrow library, which provides a lot of functional programming constructs, including an Option type.
The type defined by the Arrow library to manage optional values is the arrow.core.Option<out A> type. Basically, it’s a Algebraic Data Type (ADT), technically a sum type, which can be either Some<A> or None.
The Some<A> type represents a value of type A, while the None type represents the absence of any value. In other words, Option is a type that can either contain a value or not.
In Arrow, we can create an Option value using the available constructors directly:
val awsJob: Some<Job> =
Some(
Job(
JobId(1),
Company("AWS"),
Role("Software Engineer"),
Salary(100_000.00),
),
)
val noJob: None = None
The library also provides some helpful extension functions to create Option values:
val appleJob: Option<Job> =
Job(
JobId(2),
Company("Apple, Inc."),
Role("Software Engineer"),
Salary(70_000.00),
).some()
val noAppleJob: Option<Job> = none()
val microsoftJob: Job? =
Job(
JobId(3),
Company("Microsoft"),
Role("Software Engineer"),
Salary(80_000.00)
)
val maybeMsJob: Option<Job> = Option.fromNullable(microsoftJob)
val noMsJob: Option<Job> = Option.fromNullable(null) // noMsJob is None
Instead, to convert a nullable value to an Option value, we can also use the toOption() extension function:
val googleJob: Option<Job> =
Job(
JobId(4),
Company("Google"),
Role("Software Engineer"),
Salary(90_000.00),
).toOption()
val noGoogleJob: Option<Job> = null.toOption() // noGoogleJob is None
Now that we know how to create Option values let’s see how to use it. First of all, we make the version of the Jobs module that uses the Option type:
interface Jobs {
fun findById(id: JobId): Option<Job>
}
class LiveJobs : Jobs {
override fun findById(id: JobId): Option<Job> = try {
JOBS_DATABASE[id].toOption()
} catch (e: Exception) {
none()
}
}
Again, we’re not interested in the cause of the error. We want to handle it. If the findById function fails, we return a None value. As you may guess, the Option type is a sealed class, so we can use the when expression to handle the two possible cases. We can define a function that prints the job information of a job id if it exists:
class JobsService(private val jobs: Jobs) {
fun printOptionJob(jobId: JobId) {
val maybeJob: Option<Job> = jobs.findById(jobId)
when (maybeJob) {
is Some -> println("Job found: ${maybeJob.value}")
is None -> println("Job not found for id $jobId")
}
}
}
In this case, we can call the value property of the Some type to get the actual value because Kotlin is smart casting the original maybeJob value to the Some type.
If we call the above function with the id of a job present in the database, aka JobId(1), we get the expected output:
Job found: Job(id=JobId(value=2), company=Company(name=Apple, Inc.), role=Role(name=Software Engineer), salary=Salary(value=70000.0))
However, if we use a job id that is not associated with any job, we get the following output:
Job not found for id JobId(value=42)
However, working with pattern matching is only sometimes very convenient. A lot of time, we need to transform and combine different Option values. As in Scala, the Option type is a monad, so we can use the map and flatMap functions to transform and combine Option values. Let’s see an example.
Imagine we want to create a function that returns the gap between the job salary given a job id and the maximum salary for the same company. We want to return None if the job doesn’t exist. To implement such a function, first, we need to add a findAll method to our Jobs interface:
interface Jobs {
// Omissis...
fun findAll(): List<Job>
}
class LiveJobs : Jobs {
// Omissis...
override fun findAll(): List<Job> = JOBS_DATABASE.values.toList()
}
Then, we can implement the first version of the function calculating the salary gap using direct map and flatMap functions:
class JobsService(private val jobs: Jobs) {
fun getSalaryGapWithMax(jobId: JobId): Option<Double> {
val maybeJob: Option<Job> = jobs.findById(jobId)
val maybeMaxSalary: Option<Salary> =
jobs.findAll().maxBy { it.salary.value }.toOption().map { it.salary }
return maybeJob.flatMap { job ->
maybeMaxSalary.map { maxSalary ->
maxSalary.value - job.salary.value
}
}
}
}
We can check that everything is working by invoking the getSalaryGapWithMax in our main function:
fun main() {
val jobs: Jobs = LiveJobs()
val jobsService = JobsService(jobs)
val appleJobId = JobId(1)
val salaryGap: Option<Double> = jobsService.getSalaryGapWithMax(appleJobId)
println("The salary gap between $appleJobId and the max salary is ${salaryGap.getOrElse { 0.0 }}")
}
If we run the above code, we get the expected following output:
The salary gap between JobId(value=1) and the max salary is 20000.0
As we said, the Kotlin language does not support the for-comprehension syntax, so the sequences of nested calls to the flatMap and map function repeatedly can be a bit confusing. Again, the Arrow library gives us help and defines an option DSL to call functions on Option values in a more readable way.
The option DSL is similar to the nullable DSL, but works on the Option type instead. As for the nullable counterpart, we have two flavors of the DSL. The one accepting a suspendable lambda with receiver is option, and the one taking a non-suspendable lambda with receiver is called option.eager. The receiver of the former DSL is an arrow.core.continuations.OptionEffectScope. In contrast, the latter DSL accepts an arrow.core.continuations.OptionEagerEffectScope:
// Arrow SDK
public object option {
public inline fun <A> eager(crossinline f: suspend OptionEagerEffectScope.() -> A): Option<A> =
// Omissis...
public suspend inline operator fun <A> invoke(crossinline f: suspend OptionEffectScope.() -> A): Option<A> =
// Omissis...
}
Let’s change the above function to use the option DSL:
fun getSalaryGapWithMax2(jobId: JobId): Option<Double> = option.eager {
println("Searching for the job with id $jobId")
val job: Job = jobs.findById(jobId).bind()
println("Job found: $job")
println("Searching for the job with the max salary")
val maxSalaryJob: Job = jobs.findAll().maxBy { it.salary.value }.toOption().bind()
println("Job found: $maxSalaryJob")
maxSalaryJob.salary.value - job.salary.value
}
Again, inside the DSL, the bind function is available. If you remember from the previous section, the bind function is defined as a member extension function of the EagerEffectScope on the Option type. It extracts the value from the Option if it is a Some value. Otherwise, it eagerly returns None to the whole DSL:
// Arrow SDK
public value class OptionEagerEffectScope(private val cont: EagerEffectScope<None>) : EagerEffectScope<None> {
// Omissis...
public suspend fun <B> Option<B>.bind(): B = bind { None }
}
public suspend fun <B> Option<B>.bind(shift: () -> R): B =
when (this) {
None -> shift(shift())
is Some -> value
}
Let’s check it out. We change the main function to call the getSalaryGapWithMax2 function, passing a not existing job id:
fun main() {
val jobs: Jobs = LiveJobs()
val jobsService = JobsService(jobs)
val salarySum = jobsService.getSalaryGapWithMax2(JobId(42))
println("The sum of the salaries using 'sumSalaries' is ${salarySum.getOrElse { 0.0 }}")
}
We can check that the function immediately returns the None value without executing the rest of the code:
Searching for the job with id JobId(value=42)
The sum of the salaries using 'sumSalaries' is 0.0
In addition, the option DSL also integrates with nullable types through the ensureNotNull function. In this case, if present, the function extracts the value from a nullable type. Otherwise, it collapses the execution of the whole lambda in input to the option DSL, returning the None value. Then, we can rewrite the above example as follows:
fun getSalaryGapWithMax3(jobId: JobId): Option<Double> = option.eager {
val job: Job = jobs.findById(jobId).bind()
val maxSalaryJob: Job = ensureNotNull(
jobs.findAll().maxBy { it.salary.value },
)
maxSalaryJob.salary.value - job.salary.value
}
Last but not least, the nullable DSL we’ve seen in the previous section integrates smoothly with the Option type. In this case, the bind function called on a None type will eagerly end the whole block returning a null value:
fun getSalaryGapWithMax4(jobId: JobId): Double? = nullable {
println("Searching for the job with id $jobId")
val job: Job = jobs.findById(jobId).bind()
println("Job found: $job")
println("Searching for the job with the max salary")
val maxSalaryJob: Job = ensureNotNull(
jobs.findAll().maxBy { it.salary.value },
)
println("Job found: $maxSalaryJob")
maxSalaryJob.salary.value - job.salary.value
}
We can quickly test it by giving the getSalaryGapWithMax4 function a job id that is not present in the database and checking logs:
fun main() {
val jobs: Jobs = LiveJobs()
val jobsService = JobsService(jobs)
val fakeJobId = JobId(42)
val salaryGap: Double? = jobsService.getSalaryGapWithMax4(fakeJobId)
println("The salary gap between $fakeJobId and the max salary is ${salaryGap ?: 0.0}")
}
The logs we get are the following, highlighting the fact that the bind function is called on a None value, and the whole block is immediately ended:
Searching for the job with id JobId(value=42)
The salary gap between JobId(value=42) and the max salary is 0.0
Conclusion
This article introduced the meaning of functional error handling in Kotlin. We started showing why we shouldn’t rely on exceptions to handle errors. Then, we introduced two strategies to handling errors that forget the cause of errors: Kotlin nullable types and the Arrow Option type. Moreover, we saw how the Arrow library provides useful DSL to work with both nullable types and the Option type.
In the next part of this series, we will see different strategies that allow us to propagate the cause of errors, such as the Kotlin Result<T> type and the Arrow Either<L, R> type.
If you found this article too difficult, you can quickly get the experience you need by following the complete Kotlin Essentials course on Rock the JVM.
Appendix: Maven Configuration
We give you the maven configuration we used during the examples. Here is the pom.xml file:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 https://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd">
<modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>
<groupId>in.rcard</groupId>
<artifactId>functional-error-handling-in-kotlin</artifactId>
<version>0.0.1-SNAPSHOT</version>
<properties>
<kotlin.version>1.8.20</kotlin.version>
<arrow-core.version>1.1.5</arrow-core.version>
</properties>
<dependencies>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.jetbrains.kotlin</groupId>
<artifactId>kotlin-stdlib</artifactId>
<version>${kotlin.version}</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>io.arrow-kt</groupId>
<artifactId>arrow-core</artifactId>
<version>${arrow-core.version}</version>
<type>pom</type>
</dependency>
</dependencies>
<build>
<sourceDirectory>${project.basedir}/src/main/kotlin</sourceDirectory>
<testSourceDirectory>${project.basedir}/src/test/kotlin</testSourceDirectory>
<plugins>
<plugin>
<groupId>org.jetbrains.kotlin</groupId>
<artifactId>kotlin-maven-plugin</artifactId>
<version>${kotlin.version}</version>
<executions>
<execution>
<id>compile</id>
<goals>
<goal>compile</goal>
</goals>
</execution>
<execution>
<id>test-compile</id>
<goals>
<goal>test-compile</goal>
</goals>
</execution>
</executions>
</plugin>
<plugin>
<groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
<artifactId>maven-compiler-plugin</artifactId>
<configuration>
<source>7</source>
<target>7</target>
</configuration>
</plugin>
</plugins>
</build>
</project>