What client engine is recommended for Android and ...

# ktor

[Marc Knaup]

What client engine is recommended for Android and why?

And what Android versions support the CIO engine?
There's conflicting information on that, here from a GitHub issue:

Unfortunately, the CIO engine supports only API level 24 or higher(Android >= 8.0)

API level 24 is Android 7 though 🤔

[e5l]

Hi @Marc Knaup. You could use Android, OkHttp or CIO based engines on your Android.

[e5l]

For WebSockets you could take CIO

[Marc Knaup]

Yes I know about the three options but I'd like a way to decide for which one to use.
If they are all almost the same then why two for Android in the first place? :)

And I don't know what Android version I need for running CIO properly. And whether CIO has any benefits or downsides.

[e5l]

You need API level 24. CIO is fully on coroutines. Android and OkHttp use blocking network instead

[Marc Knaup]

Ah okay thank you.
So Android 7 is fine, not Android 8 like it says on GitHub and here in Slack?

[e5l]

Yep

[ribesg]

@Marc Knaup unless that changed very recently, CIO also does not support HTTP/2

[Marc Knaup]

So I guess Android engine is most preferable for now as it supports HTTP/2 and doesn't require an additional library bundled with the app?

[e5l]

Android is based on URLConnection.

[Marc Knaup]

yes, so no external lib 🙂

There is no guidance on how to decide for an engine, so I need to collect information to be able to make that decision 🙂

[ribesg]

Usually you use OkHttp over the vanilla Android thing because of its far better API and management of common network errors, but I don’t know how that applies to ktor as you’re behind the same API in this case. I don’t know what the other advantages of OkHttp are, but I’m pretty sure there are some

[Marc Knaup]

Yup, that's my problem - there's no information on stuff like that 😅