Hello. 1st of all, ktor is super. I've built a sample project with it in no time. I have some diffic...

# ktor

[Alexander Vasiljev]

Hello. 1st of all, ktor is super. I've built a sample project with it in no time. I have some difficulties it coupling locations and views (built with html dsl). My views are refactored into separate classes, like this one, for the main template.

MainTemplate.kt

[Deactivated User]

what do you mean by coupling locations and views?

[Alexander Vasiljev]

As you see, template references locations
https://ktor.io/servers/features/locations.html
they are defined elsewhere in the project:

@Location("/products")
class Products
@Location("/platforms")
class Platforms
@Location("/deviceModels")
class DeviceModels

[Alexander Vasiljev]

so instead of using error-prone string literals inside template, like a(href = "/products") { +"Products" } one is able to a(href = href(Products())) { +"Products" } -- the feature is great!

[Alexander Vasiljev]

The problem is to resolve the location (href(Products())) inside the template. Corresponding function href is available only in Routing context. For now I am using the trick:

var href: (Any) -> String = { "" }

fun Routing.commonRoutes() {

    href = fun(location: Any): String { return application.locations.href(location) }
  // etc.

and wonder if more elegant solution might exist?

[Alexander Vasiljev]

Or maybe ktor framework will add some global function to resolve location even out of Routing context?

[Deactivated User]

Aha, let me check

[Deactivated User]

I’m checking why href depends on the Routing/ApplicationCall context.

Still I guess you can create a Template subclass with a call: ApplicationCall, and make a href method or extension method for that class that calls the right method with the right context

[Deactivated User]

I believe that the context is used to cache the information per type

[Alexander Vasiljev]

Your suggestion is correct, yet the code would become little too verbose in my scenario:

fun Routing.productRoutes() {
    get<Products> { _ ->
        call.respondHtmlTemplate(
                ListTemplate(
                        title = "All products",
                        tableModel = allProductTableModel(),
                        href = fun(location: Any) = [e-mail](location)
                )
        ) {}
    }
}

same code for every get or post

[Alexander Vasiljev]

instead of

fun Routing.productRoutes() {
    get<Products> { _ ->
        call.respondHtmlTemplate(
                ListTemplate(title = "All products", tableModel = allProductTableModel())
        ) {}
    }
}

[Alexander Vasiljev]

and pithiness is what we love kotlin (and ktor) for

[orangy]

I admit Locations is a feature that needs much more attention, but unfortunately right now we don’t have enough resource. It’s not about coding, more about designing it better.

[orangy]

In general, we don’t really allow static context, it doesn’t work well with multiple servers in the single process, doesn’t work great with multithreading, etc. So you will still have to pass some context into a template.

[orangy]

All you need is Location feature instance, so it shouldn’t be too hard?

[orangy]

If you’re fine with some statics, you can have a global lateinit variable that you initialize with an Application instance and use it everywhere.

[orangy]

But I would suggest against it 🙂

[Alexander Vasiljev]

Current solution is nothing more then hack, that would break in multithread environment, I agree completely here.

[orangy]

Static application (or Location instance) won’t break in multithreaded environment, given you have only one app in a JVM and you initialize it once and never change.

[Deactivated User]

you can also make your html builder suspend, and use the coroutineContext as a dependency container 🤨, like a scala implicit. Though I wouldn’t do that either

the main problem with globals (in addition to multithreading issues) is testing or multiple applications, you normally want to start things from scratch. Even when in control at the beginning, it is a bad practice in general

[Alexander Vasiljev]

It’s not about coding, more about designing it better.

So I provided you with feedback from a real world application. Anyway, thank you for a wonderful framework.

[orangy]

Thanks for feedback 🙂 It would be awesome if you could post an issue to GitHub so we have it handy when we’ll work on the design.

[orangy]

@Deactivated User coroutine context is a nice idea indeed! However it would require changes to kotlinx.html I believe

[Alexander Vasiljev]

or Location instance

I do not see that Location instance would be of any use though. E.g. there are actually

@Location("/products")
class Products {
@Location("/{id}")
class Item(val id: Int)
}

and later:

private fun ProductModel.asRowModel(): RowModel {
    return RowModel(listOf(RefCell(id) { href(Products.Item(id)) }, PlainCell(name)))
}

It is possible to embed links into list view. Each to corresponding item: href(Products.Item(id)) for every item in the list

[orangy]

I mean Locations feature instance, like application.locations

[Alexander Vasiljev]

Ah, I see

[Deactivated User]

@orangy I thought that the DSL was inline already. But just checked and it is not the case, so yeah, it wouldn’t work directly. You would have to get the links before the DSL.

[Alexander Vasiljev]

@orangy here is an issue:
https://github.com/ktorio/ktor/issues/597