What’s the best way to get a singleton HttpClient?...

# ktor

[João Gabriel Zó]

What’s the best way to get a singleton HttpClient? Couldn’t figure out how to just put it inside an Object

[Aleksei Tirman [JB]]

You can define a top-level property that will refer to an HttpClient instance.

[ayodele]

@Aleksei Tirman [JB] As a top level property, it won't create another instance ?? It will return the same instance??

[Aleksei Tirman [JB]]

It will return the same instance because as far as I know under the hood it’s a static class property which is assigned only once.

[maxmello]

I use this approach:

val attributeHttpClient = AttributeKey<HttpClient>("httpClient")

val Application.httpClient: HttpClient
    get() = attributes[attributeHttpClient]

val ApplicationCall.httpClient: HttpClient
    get() = this.application.httpClient

and inside your application module

this.attributes.put(attributeHttpClient, /* create your default http client here */)

Which is basically the same as using lateinit var top level and initializing once inside the module, but I like it a little better as it restricts usage to have at least access to the application

[Aleksei Tirman [JB]]

@ayodele but you may have problems if auto-reloading is enabled.