Choosing an engine
To run a Ktor server application, you need to create and configure a server first. Server configuration includes different settings:
an engine for processing network requests;
host and port values used to access a server;
SSL settings;
... and so on.
Supported engines
The table below lists engines supported by Ktor, along with the supported platforms:
Engine | Platforms | HTTP/2 |
---|---|---|
| JVM | ✅ |
| JVM | ✅ |
| JVM | ✅ |
| ✖️ | |
JVM | ✅ |
Add dependencies
Before using the desired engine, you need to add the corresponding dependency to your build script:
ktor-server-netty
ktor-server-jetty
ktor-server-tomcat
ktor-server-cio
Below are examples of adding a dependency for Netty:
Choose how to create a server
A Ktor server application can be created and run in two ways: using the embeddedServer to quickly pass server parameters in code, or using EngineMain to load the configuration from the external application.conf
or application.yaml
file.
embeddedServer
The embeddedServer function accepts an engine factory used to create an engine of a specific type. In the example below, we pass the Netty factory to run a server with the Netty engine and listen on the 8080
port:
EngineMain
EngineMain
represents an engine for running a server. You can use the following engines:
io.ktor.server.netty.EngineMain
io.ktor.server.jetty.EngineMain
io.ktor.server.tomcat.EngineMain
io.ktor.server.cio.EngineMain
The EngineMain.main
function is used to start a server with the selected engine and loads the application module specified in the external configuration file. In the example below, we start a server from the application's main
function:
If you need to start a server using a build system task, you need to configure the required EngineMain
as the main class:
Configure an engine
In this section, we'll take a look at how to specify various engine-specific options.
In code
The embeddedServer
function allows you to pass engine-specific options using the configure
optional parameter. This parameter includes options common for all engines and exposed by the ApplicationEngine.Configuration class.
In addition to these options, you can configure additional engine-specific properties.
Netty
Netty-specific options are exposed by the NettyApplicationEngine.Configuration class.
Jetty
Jetty-specific options are exposed by the JettyApplicationEngineBase.Configuration class.
You can configure the Jetty server inside the configureServer block, which provides access to a Server instance.
Use the idleTimeout
property to specify the duration of time a connection can be idle before it gets closed.
CIO
CIO-specific options are exposed by the CIOApplicationEngine.Configuration class.
Tomcat
If you use Tomcat as the engine, you can configure it using the configureTomcat property, which provides access to a Tomcat instance.
In a configuration file
If you use EngineMain
, you can specify options common for all engines in a configuration file within the ktor.deployment
group.
Netty
You can also configure Netty-specific options in a configuration file within the ktor.deployment
group: