Ktor websocket client connected with more than one server - kotlin

Question

So I am creating a distributed Key-Value datastore and have a broker to manage/query.
Here is my client:
val client = HttpClient(CIO) {
install(WebSockets)
}
runBlocking {
client.ws(
method = HttpMethod.Get,
host = ip,
port = port,
path = "/thepath"
) {
...
}
}
client.close()
So far I can connect only one server to the client (Obviously by the code above).
What I tried is to create an array of all the available servers and randomly pick one and work with the broker (client). But this works only for the connected server and the others should wait until the connection is closed.
val clients: Array<HttpClient?> = arrayOfNulls(replicationFactor)
for (i in 0 until replicationFactor) {
clients[i] = HttpClient(CIO) {
install(WebSockets)
}
}
runBlocking {
clients[0]?.ws(
method = HttpMethod.Get,
host = "some ip",
port = the_port,
path = "/thepath"
) {
....
}
...
...
}
Any ideas of how to tackle this problem? Maybe I can keep the connection with each server on a separate thread.

Answer 1

You can create any number of HTTP clients and connect them to a server concurrently. Here is an example:
suspend fun main() {
val clients = (0 until 3).map {
HttpClient(CIO) {
install(WebSockets)
}
}
val connections = coroutineScope {
clients.mapIndexed { index, client ->
async {
client.ws("wss://echo.websocket.org") {
outgoing.send(Frame.Text("Hello server"))
incoming.consumeEach { frame ->
if (frame is Frame.Text) {
println("[$index] Server replied ${frame.readText()}")
}
}
}
}
}.toTypedArray()
}
awaitAll(*connections)
}