Thymeleaf

Ktor allows you to use Thymeleaf templates as views within your application by installing the Thymeleaf plugin.

Add dependencies

To use Thymeleaf, you need to include the ktor-server-thymeleaf artifact in the build script:

implementation("io.ktor:ktor-server-thymeleaf:$ktor_version")

implementation "io.ktor:ktor-server-thymeleaf:$ktor_version"

        
                    <dependency>
                        <groupId>io.ktor</groupId>
                        <artifactId>ktor-server-thymeleaf-jvm</artifactId>
                        <version>${ktor_version}</version>
                    </dependency>
                    
        

Install Thymeleaf

To install the Thymeleaf plugin to the application, pass it to the install function in the specified module. The code snippets below show how to install Thymeleaf...

... inside the embeddedServer function call.
... inside the explicitly defined module, which is an extension function of the Application class.

                    import io.ktor.server.application.*
                    import io.ktor.server.thymeleaf.*
                    // ...
                    fun main() {
                        embeddedServer(Netty, port = 8080) {
                            install(Thymeleaf)
                            // ...
                        }.start(wait = true)
                    }
                

                    import io.ktor.server.application.*
                    import io.ktor.server.thymeleaf.*
                    // ...
                    fun Application.module() {
                        install(Thymeleaf)
                        // ...
                    }
                

Configure Thymeleaf

Configure template loading

Inside the install block, you can configure the ClassLoaderTemplateResolver. For example, the code snippet below enables Ktor to look up *.html templates in the templates package relative to the current classpath:

import io.ktor.server.application.*
import io.ktor.server.thymeleaf.*
import org.thymeleaf.templateresolver.ClassLoaderTemplateResolver

fun Application.module() {
    install(Thymeleaf) {
        setTemplateResolver(ClassLoaderTemplateResolver().apply {
            prefix = "templates/"
            suffix = ".html"
            characterEncoding = "utf-8"
        })
    }
}

Send a template in response

Imagine you have the index.html template in resources/templates:

<html xmlns:th="http://www.thymeleaf.org">
    <body>
        <h1 th:text="'Hello, ' + ${user.name}"></h1>
    </body>
</html>

A data model for a user looks as follows:

data class User(val id: Int, val name: String)

To use the template for the specified route, pass ThymeleafContent to the call.respond method in the following way:

        get("/index") {
            val sampleUser = User(1, "John")
            call.respond(ThymeleafContent("index", mapOf("user" to sampleUser)))
        }

Example: Auto reload Thymeleaf templates

The example below shows how to reload Thymeleaf templates automatically when development mode is used.

package com.example

import io.ktor.server.application.*
import io.ktor.server.response.*
import io.ktor.server.routing.*
import io.ktor.server.thymeleaf.*
import org.thymeleaf.templateresolver.*

fun main(args: Array<String>): Unit = io.ktor.server.netty.EngineMain.main(args)

fun Application.module() {
    install(Thymeleaf) {
        setTemplateResolver((if (developmentMode) {
            FileTemplateResolver().apply {
                cacheManager = null
                prefix = "src/main/resources/templates/"
            }
        } else {
            ClassLoaderTemplateResolver().apply {
                prefix = "templates/"
            }
        }).apply {
            suffix = ".html"
            characterEncoding = "utf-8"
        })
    }
    routing {
        get("/index") {
            val sampleUser = User(1, "John")
            call.respond(ThymeleafContent("index", mapOf("user" to sampleUser)))
        }
    }
}

data class User(val id: Int, val name: String)

You can find the complete example here: thymeleaf-auto-reload.

Last modified: 02 April 2024