http4k VS kotlinx.serialization

You named Express as an example for a good framework - I'd say both http4k and ktor come close to it. Spring Boot would really be on the other end and I met lots of JS/TS devs that didn't even want to touch it. I did have the same impression than you though: Documentation for ktor is not great at all.

http4k has excellent documentation and very simple concepts.

I couple of years ago I was lucky to use http4k, a server as a function web library for Kotlin. It was such a wonderful change compared to every other technologies available in both Java and Kotlin. It's simple.

Testing becomes so much easier too, as one can instantiate a the whole web routing aspect, without having to bind it to a port and having to send real http requests.

If strongly suggest people to take a look at it. It's not perfect, but it's a lot simpler than other frameworks and libraries. And it's a shift in some of the current mentality of using heavy frameworks (such as spring boot) which blow up anyone's cognitive load.

https://github.com/http4k/http4k

http4k with the contract, format-jackson, and server-undertow modules

Have you tried this:? https://github.com/Kotlin/kotlinx.serialization/blob/master/docs/serializers.md

Regardless, I followed the documentation to register List for polymorphic serialization and my static code analysis does not seem to be happy with it.

I think kotlinx.serialization might come close, but looks like custom Encoders and Decoders are still experimental.

This example will not work on a multiplatform project. you are using gson, gson runs only on jvm, you should use https://github.com/Kotlin/kotlinx.serialization for the json parsing

This is the issue to +1 https://github.com/Kotlin/kotlinx.serialization/issues/1931

Fun fact, kotlinx.serialization had a release just recently which makes it come with some bundled proguard rules to make this experience easier. Yes you'll still have issues if you're using things via reflection and try to serialize things that proguard deemed unused and removed them, but it's a step forward https://github.com/Kotlin/kotlinx.serialization/releases/tag/v1.5.0-RC

Kotlin Serialization

Kotlin Serialization is also a newer option, but doesn't have as much traction.

``` see the docs