In terms of negatives, I think the community being...

# ktor

[Karl Azzam]

In terms of negatives, I think the community being small compared to spring means a lot of gotchas can take longer to debug, some of the documentation is outdated (i.e httpresponse has been deprecated for httpstatement and is still the go to example for http clients), and finally imo supporting multiplatform worries me, is it going to become a master of none jack of all trades type ordeal or will they focus mainly on being a kickass framework for server and clients

[Big Chungus]

Totally valid point. However, to be a devil's advocate, I would say that since ktor is mostly reflectionless (a.k.a. no "black magic") means that unexpected issues happen way less frequently.

[Karl Azzam]

Yeah that no black magic is great in that once u get used to ktor, debugging is pretty chillax

[Karl Azzam]

Curious if youre using a HOCON file or init ur config inside the code @Big Chungus . I like how readable HOCON files are although i wish there was 1. A way to inject variables via Hashicorp vault, AWS secret manager, etc in the HOCON file. I was trying to find a way to run code before the HOCON file gets read so u can invoke the api for these secret managers and read them in

[Karl Azzam]

And 2. A way to differentiate the env (dev, prod, etc) via multiple HOCON files and their name i.e application-dev.hocon. Spring has this via profiles

[Landry Norris]

For setting up variables, I generally set up a CI pipeline for deployment, and I have a script that uses sed to replace variables right before uploading.

[Landry Norris]

For multiple Hocon files: I’ve set this up before, but you have to give up the nicety of EngineMain and set up the startup code yourself.

[Karl Azzam]

@Landry Norris how do u handle updating variables without having to rekickoff your CI pipeline

[Karl Azzam]

Storing config and secrets in vault, k8 secrets, aws secret manager, etc means u can update a secret, bounce the service, and then it will use the latest version

[Karl Azzam]

Lets say i use vault. I would prefer a way to hit the vault api and retrieve all the secrets before the server is initialized

[Landry Norris]

That is the main downside. I have to restart my CI pipeline whenever I need the variables changed. I have that set up as part of how I handle changes in variables, but that may just be me.

[Landry Norris]

I’ve never used Vault. You may be able to use Ktor Client to retrieve keys in the module function or in the main function if Vault has a REST API.

[Karl Azzam]

Yeah thats what im doing now (Vault has a REST api) however im looking for a way to hit it and then override what ever is being used to substitute variables in the hocon file

[Landry Norris]

I see. I don’t know of any way to do that.

[Landry Norris]

Are these configuration variables all custom or do you also want to change vars that Ktor recognizes? If it’s all custom, you could wrap that in as part of the abstraction.

[Karl Azzam]

Theres prob a way i gotta read into the ktor code, theyre doing the same concept by allowing u to substitute the application modules as variables in hocon instead of code

[Karl Azzam]

All custom yeah, other frameworks like dropwizard and spring allow u to override the variable substitute class with ur own impl (i.e dropwizard: https://github.com/dropwizard/dropwizard/blob/master/dropwizard-configuration/src/main/java/io/dropwizard/configuration/SubstitutingSourceProvider.java)