On the server-side, in addition to handling requests, Ktor exposes a mechanism to produce and consume global events.
For example, when the application is starting, has started, or has stopped, an event is generated and raised.
You can subscribe to or unsubscribe from these events and trigger code execution.
The monitor: ApplicationEvents
instance, associated with the application environment, acts as the event dispatcher.
The ApplicationEvents
dispatches typed EventDefinition<T>
along with an object T
.
You can get the monitor along with the application instance by executing application.environment.monitor
.
ApplicationEvents
APIThe simplified API for the monitor: ApplicationEvents
looks like this:
class ApplicationEvents {
fun <T> subscribe(definition: EventDefinition<T>, handler: EventHandler<T>): DisposableHandle
fun <T> unsubscribe(definition: EventDefinition<T>, handler: EventHandler<T>)
fun <T> raise(definition: EventDefinition<T>, value: T)
}
class EventDefinition<T>
typealias EventHandler<T> = (T) -> Unit
interface DisposableHandle {
fun dispose()
}
Ktor provides some predefined events that are dispatched by the engine:
val ApplicationStarting: EventDefinition<Application>
val ApplicationStarted: EventDefinition<Application>
val ApplicationStopPreparing: EventDefinition<ApplicationEnvironment>
val ApplicationStopping: EventDefinition<Application>
val ApplicationStopped: EventDefinition<Application>
You can subscribe to events by calling the subscribe
method from the monitor.
The subscribe method returns a DisposableHandle
that you can call to cancel the subscription.
Additionally, you can call the unsubscribe
method with the same method handle to cancel the subscription.
Using the disposable:
val disposable = application.environment.monitor.subscribe(ApplicationStarting) { application: Application ->
// Handle the event using the application as subject
}
disposable.dispose() // Cancels the subscription
Using a lambda stored in a property:
val starting: (Application) -> Unit = { log("Application starting: $it") }
application.environment.monitor.subscribe(ApplicationStarting, starting) // subscribe
application.environment.monitor.unsubscribe(ApplicationStarting, starting) // unsubscribe
Using a method reference:
fun starting(application: Application) { log("Application starting: $it") }
application.environment.monitor.subscribe(ApplicationStarting, ::starting) // subscribe
application.environment.monitor.unsubscribe(ApplicationStarting, ::starting) // unsubscribe
If you want to create custom events and dispatch or raise them:
class MySubject
val MyEventDefinition = EventDefinition<MySubject>()
monitor.raise(MyEventDefinition, MySubject())
You can check the CallLogging
feature source code that includes code subscribing to events from the application.