I need to make a very simple http server in a kotlin native app (just for rpc with a webapp). I can...

# kotlin-native

[capitalthree]

I need to make a very simple http server in a kotlin native app (just for rpc with a webapp). I can't find any kotlin-native-ready http server libraries, so does anybody know of any, and if not, what would be the best choice for making a simple tcp listener in kotlin native (and I could slap together a simple http implementation that would be good enough for my purposes)?

[simon.vergauwen]

Ktor is multi platform. I haven’t tried it yet on native though.

https://ktor.io/docs/http-client-multiplatform.html#add-dependencies

[simon.vergauwen]

That is a link to client, not server though..

[Big Chungus]

Yes, ktor-client is mpp, but not ktor-server. Mpp server is planned after new kn memory model arrives

[Big Chungus]

There's this , see if it gives you any ideas

[Big Chungus]

And a gist

[capitalthree]

Sadly I need something that will also work on windows. Was really hoping to avoid cinterop stuff.

[saket]

I wanted to avoid cinterop too because it is so painful to setup! I ended up going with the route of creating an interface that is implemented by target platforms.

[capitalthree]

I can use cinterop as a last resort, but either way I'd need an option that even supports the windows platform

[Big Chungus]

Posix should cover most of fs, no?

[Big Chungus]

So cinterops on nativeMain should be sufficient to cover all platforms

[Big Chungus]

The gist i linked to doesn't use any custom cinterops and is built only on posix. See if it works for your usecase

[capitalthree]

oh, I assumed posix excluded windows, but yeah, I'll test whether it can build for windows when I get the chance, thanks

[Big Chungus]

Windows as always is a special snowflake when it comes to posix, but id does have a partial implementation of the standard, so some things still work.

[Didier Villevalois]

@capitalthree another option is to build on ktor-network that offers raw TCP socket support with selection. See this Simple Echo Server. You just have to replace <http://Dispatchers.IO|Dispatchers.IO> by coroutineContext. So it will be single-threaded for now, until we have the new memory model and multithreaded coroutines. However, I guess coroutines on a single thread should be enough for a simple server.

I tested it on linux and it works perfectly. (If you have a windows box, I'd be glad to know whether it works there too.) Based, on that it should not be too hard to implement a simple and naive HTTP implementation.

[Didier Villevalois]

Btw, you also have its dependency ktor-io, if you want to do some funky binary IO.

[Didier Villevalois]

And ktor-network also offers TLS...

[capitalthree]

Oh I'm seeing this way late, but thank you very much for the echo test example! I will work off of that.