Skip to main content
Version: 2.x

How to Integrate with ZIO Config

When building HTTP applications, it is common to have configuration settings that need to be loaded from various sources such as environment variables, system properties, or configuration files. It is essential especially when deploying applications to different environments like development, testing, and production, or we want to have a cloud-native application that can be configured dynamically.

ZIO HTTP provides seamless integration with ZIO Config, a powerful configuration library for ZIO, to manage configurations in your HTTP applications.

In this guide, we will learn how to integrate ZIO HTTP with ZIO Config to load configuration settings for our HTTP applications.

ZIO Config Overview​

The ZIO core library has a built-in configuration system that allows us to define a type-safe configuration schema, load configurations from various sources, validate configurations, and access configuration settings in a functional way.

We can define a configuration schema for any custom data type. For example, if we have a DatabaseConfig case class as follows:

case class DatabaseConfig(
  url: String,
  username: String,
  password: String,
  poolSize: Int,
)

We can derive a configuration schema for DatabaseConfig using ZIO Config as follows:

import zio._
import zio.config._
import zio.config.magnolia._

object DatabaseConfig {
  val config: Config[DatabaseConfig] =
    DeriveConfig.deriveConfig[DatabaseConfig]
      .mapKey(toSnakeCase)
      .nested("database")
}

Now, we can load the configuration settings for DatabaseConfig by calling ZIO.config(DatabaseConfig.config):

import zio._

object MainApp extends ZIOAppDefault {
  def run = {
    for {
      config <- ZIO.config(DatabaseConfig.config)
      _      <- ZIO.debug("Just started right now!")
      _      <- ZIO.debug(s"Connecting to the database: ${config.url}")
    } yield () 
  }
}

By default, ZIO will load the configs from environment variables, so we need to set the following environment variables:

export DATABASE_URL="jdbc:postgresql://localhost:5432/mydb"
export DATABASE_USERNAME="admin"
export DATABASE_PASSWORD="password"
export DATABASE_POOL_SIZE=10

Loading Configuration Settings from a File​

As we mentioned earlier, by default, ZIO loads configurations from environment variables. However, we can change the ConfigProvider to load configurations from other sources such as system properties, console, and system properties. All of these are built-in providers in the ZIO core library.

ZIO Config also provides more advanced ConfigProviders such as HOCON, JSON, YAML, and XML. Based on the configuration format, we need to add one of the following dependencies to our project:

libraryDependencies += "dev.zio" %% "zio-config-typesafe" % "4.0.2" // HOCON
libraryDependencies += "dev.zio" %% "zio-config-yaml"     % "4.0.2" // YAML and JSON
libraryDependencies += "dev.zio" %% "zio-config-xml"      % "4.0.2" // XML

Assuming we have an application.conf file inside the resources directory with the following content:

database {
  url: "jdbc:mysql://localhost:3306/mydatabase"
  url: ${?DATABASE_URL} 
  username: "user"
  username: ${?DATABASE_USERNAME} 
  password: "password"
  password: ${?DATABASE_PASSWORD} 
  pool_size: 20
  pool_size: ${?DATABASE_POOL_SIZE} 
}

Then, we can load it using the ConfigProvider.fromResourcePath method:

import zio._
import zio.http._
import zio.config.typesafe._

object MainApp extends ZIOAppDefault {
  override val bootstrap: ZLayer[ZIOAppArgs, Any, Any] =
    Runtime.setConfigProvider(ConfigProvider.fromResourcePath())

  def run = 
    for {
      config <- ZIO.config(DatabaseConfig.config)
      _      <- ZIO.debug("Just started right now!")
      _      <- ZIO.debug(s"Connecting to the database: ${config.url}")
    } yield () 
}

Client and Server Configuration​

Both Client and Server have the default layer that requires no configuration and provides an instance of Client and Server with default settings:

object Client {
  val default: ZLayer[Any, Throwable, Client] = ???
}

object Server {
  val default: ZLayer[Any, Throwable, Server] = ???
}

In some cases, we need to customize the client or server settings such as timeouts, host, port, and other parameters. To do that, ZIO HTTP provides live and customized layers that require additional configuration settings:

object Client {
  case class Config(
    // configuration settings for client
  )
  
  val live      : ZLayer[Client.Config with NettyConfig with DnsResolver, Throwable, Client]  = ??? 
  def customized: ZLayer[Client.Config with ClientDriver with DnsResolver, Throwable, Client] = ???
}

object Server {
  case class Config(
    // configuration settings for server 
  )
  
  val live      : ZLayer[Server.Config, Throwable, Server]               = ???
  val customized: ZLayer[Server.Config & NettyConfig, Throwable, Server] = ???
}

So, to have a customized client or server, we need to provide configuration layers to satisfy the required dependencies. For example, to create a live server, we need to provide a ZLayer that produces a Server.Config.

For a practical example, see the following code which enables the response compression in the server:

zio-http-example/src/main/scala/example/ServerResponseCompression.scala
package example

import zio._

import zio.http._

object ServerResponseCompression extends ZIOAppDefault {
  val httpApp = Routes(
    Method.GET / "hello" -> handler(Response.text("Hello, World!")),
  ).sandbox

  val config = ZLayer.succeed(
    Server.Config.default.copy(
      responseCompression = Some(Server.Config.ResponseCompressionConfig.default),
    ),
  )

  def run = Server.serve(httpApp).provide(Server.live, config)
}

In the above example, we updated the default server configuration to enable the response compression. Finally, we provided the Server.live and our customized config layer to the Server.serve method.

Predefined Configuration Schemas​

Until now, we changed the server configuration programmatically inside the code. But what if we want to load the client or server configuration from a file, e.g. application.conf? We need to have a configuration schema for the client and server settings, i.e. zio.Config[Client.Config] and zio.Config[Server.Config]. Fortunately, ZIO HTTP provides these configuration schemas by default.

Before going further, let's take a look at the Server.Config and Client.Config and see how are they defined in ZIO HTTP:

object Client {
  case class Config(
    // configuration settings for client
  )
  object Config {
    // Configuration Schema for Cleint.Config
    val config: zio.Config[Client.Config] = ???

    // default configuration for Client.Config
    lazy val default: Client.Config = ???
  }
}

object Server {
  case class Config(
    // configuration settings for server
  )
  object Config {
    // configuration schema for Server.Config
    val config: zio.Config[Server.Config] = ???

    // default configuration for Server.Config
    lazy val default: Server.Config = ???
  }
}

The Server and Client modules have predefined config schema, i.e. Server.Config.config and Client.Config.config, that can be used to load the server/client configuration from the environment, system properties, or any other configuration sources.

Loading Configuration Settings from Environment Variables​

As the ZIO HTTP provided these configuration schemas by default, we can easily use them to load the configuration settings from the considered sources using the corresponding ConfigProvider:

import zio._
import zio.http._

object MainApp extends ZIOAppDefault {
  def run = {
    Server
      .install(
        Routes(
          Method.GET / "hello" -> handler(Response.text("Hello, world!")),
        ),
      )
      .flatMap(port => ZIO.debug(s"Sever started on http://localhost:$port") *> ZIO.never)
      .provide(
        Server.live,
        ZLayer.fromZIO(
          ZIO.config(Server.Config.config.mapKey(_.replace('-', '_'))),
        ),
      )
  }
}
export BINDING_HOST=localhost
export BINDING_PORT=8081
note

In the above example, we used the mapKey method to replace the - character with _ in the configuration keys. This is because the environment variables do not allow the - character in the key names.

Loading Configuration Settings from an HOCON File​

By changing the ConfigProvider to ConfigProvider.fromResourcePath(), we can load the server configuration from the application.conf file:

zio.http.server {
  binding_port: 8083
  binding_host: localhot
}
zio-http-example/src/main/scala/example/config/LoadServerConfigFromHoconFile.scala
package example.config

import zio._

import zio.config._
import zio.config.typesafe._

import zio.http._

object LoadServerConfigFromHoconFile extends ZIOAppDefault {
  override val bootstrap: ZLayer[ZIOAppArgs, Any, Any] =
    Runtime.setConfigProvider(ConfigProvider.fromResourcePath())

  def run = {
    Server
      .install(
        Routes(
          Method.GET / "hello" -> handler(Response.text("Hello, world!")),
        ),
      )
      .flatMap(port => ZIO.debug(s"Sever started on http://localhost:$port") *> ZIO.never)
      .provide(
        Server.live,
        ZLayer.fromZIO(
          ZIO.config(Server.Config.config.nested("zio.http.server").mapKey(_.replace('-', '_'))),
        ),
      )
  }
}

Instead of providing two layers (Server.live and ZLayer.fromZIO(ZIO.config(Server.Config.config))) to the Server.serve method, we can combine them into a single layer using the Server.configured layer:

zio-http-example/src/main/scala/example/config/HoconWithConfiguredLayerExample.scala
package example.config

import zio._

import zio.config.typesafe._

import zio.http._

object HoconWithConfiguredLayerExample extends ZIOAppDefault {
  override val bootstrap: ZLayer[ZIOAppArgs, Any, Any] =
    Runtime.setConfigProvider(ConfigProvider.fromResourcePath())

  def run = {
    Server
      .install(
        Routes(
          Method.GET / "hello" -> handler(Response.text("Hello, world!")),
        ),
      )
      .flatMap(port => ZIO.debug(s"Sever started on http://localhost:$port") *> ZIO.never)
      .provide(Server.configured())
  }
}

Customized Layers​

If we need to have more control, the Server and Client companion objects have also customized layers that require additional configuration settings to customize the underlying settings for the server and client:

  • Server.customized is a layer that requires a Server.Config and NettyConfig and returns a Server layer.
  • Client.customized is a layer that requires a Client.Config, NettyConfig, and DnsResolver and returns a Client layer.
import zio._
import zio.http._
import zio.http.netty._
object Clinet {
  case class Config(
    // configuration settings for client
  )
  
  val customized: ZLayer[Config with ClientDriver with DnsResolver, Throwable, Client] = ???
}

object Server {
  case class Config(
    // configuration settings for server 
  )
  
  val customized: ZLayer[Config & NettyConfig, Throwable, Server] = ???
}

Summary​

In this guide, we learned how to integrate ZIO HTTP with ZIO Config to load configuration settings for our HTTP applications. We also learned how to load configuration settings from environment variables, system properties, and configuration files, such as HOCON and YAML using ZIO Config's configuration providers.