Feature Request: Server-side support with Ktor #436
Description
Overview
Connect-Kotlin is an excellent lightweight library that currently focuses only on the client side. Because there is no official server-side support, Kotlin server projects cannot adopt the Connect protocol and often turn to alternatives such as OpenAPI or GraphQL. If Connect-Kotlin also supported the server side, the entire Connect ecosystem would become even stronger.
Why Ktor?
Ktor is a Kotlin framework developed and maintained by JetBrains—the same organisation behind the language itself. Built around asynchronous I/O and coroutines, it provides a unified API for both client- and server-side development, and is widely regarded as the first choice for server-side Kotlin.
An official Ktor adapter for Connect could be integrated seamlessly into existing Ktor services while keeping learning and operational costs low. In practice, the key features—Unary RPC, metadata handling, and request validation with Protovalidate—should be achievable by reusing the existing codecs and error model and adding only a thin adapter layer.
A proof of concept already exists: connect-ktor, which supplies a lightweight adapter library and generator, demonstrating that Connect can run effectively on Ktor.
Next steps
Could you share the current roadmap for the server side support in Connect-Kotlin and your thoughts on providing official Ktor compatibility?
It may also be feasible to adopt the community implementation as an official module. If this is of interest, I would be happy to help migrate the existing code and prepare the documentation.
Thank you for your consideration.