Guide

Version

This documentation covers Neton 1.0.0-beta1 (Kotlin 2.4.0 / KSP 2.3.10). Where the documentation and the code disagree, the compilable examples under neton/examples/ and the framework sources are authoritative.

Welcome to the Neton Framework guide.

Neton is a modern Kotlin/Native web framework built on Kotlin Multiplatform. It compiles to a native binary and uses no reflection, which gives it millisecond startup and a small memory footprint. This guide takes you from an empty directory to a working, high-performance service.

Contents

Getting started

• Quick start — build and run your first Neton application
• Project structure — module layout, directory conventions and config files

Core features

• Routing and controllers — controller annotations, HTTP methods, route groups, DSL routes
• Parameter binding — inference by convention, plus path / query / body / header / cookie binding
• Configuration — TOML files, environment overrides, the @NetonConfig SPI
• Logging — structured logs, sink routing, asynchronous writes, trace context

Security

• Security guide — the Authenticator + Guard architecture, JWT authentication, @RequireAuth / @AllowAnonymous

Data and caching

• Database — the entity + table model, the type-safe query DSL, the logic layer
• Cache — two-tier L1 + L2 caching, @Cacheable / @CachePut / @CacheEvict
• Redis and distributed locks — the Redis client and the @Lock annotation
• Domain events — decoupling modules with the event bus; SYNC / BEST_EFFORT / RETRYABLE

Advanced

• Middleware — the request pipeline and custom middleware
• Deployment and targets — release builds and cross-platform compilation
• Toolchain known issues — known build noise from Kotlin/Native, KSP and Gradle