@glandjs/koa

@glandjs/koa binds your controllers and channels to a Koa 3 application. It is the adapter with the least to explain: Koa’s model is the model this layer already uses.

pnpm add @glandjs/core @glandjs/common @glandjs/events @glandjs/http @glandjs/koa koa @koa/router reflect-metadata

This page is a summary

The full documentation is mirrored from the repository on every build.

Attaching it

import { GlandFactory } from '@glandjs/core'
import { Controller, Module } from '@glandjs/common'
import { Get } from '@glandjs/http'
import { KoaBroker, type KoaContext } from '@glandjs/koa'

@Controller('/products')
export class ProductController {
  @Get('/:id')
  async find(ctx: KoaContext) {
    return { product: await ctx.call('db:product:find', { id: ctx.params.id }) }
  }
}

@Module({ controllers: [ProductController] })
export class AppModule {}

const { app } = await GlandFactory.create(AppModule)
const http = app.connectTo(KoaBroker, { poweredBy: false })

http.bodyParser({ limit: 1_000_000 })
http.listen(3000)

Exports

Symbol	Description
KoaBroker<TEvents>	The broker you pass to connectTo().
KoaContext<TEvents>	The context your handlers receive.
KoaCore<TEvents>	The application object, plus http.koa.
KoaAdapter<TEvents>	The transport implementation.

The real onion

Koa is an onion, so await next() genuinely suspends until everything downstream has run, and a downstream throw reaches an upstream catch. This is the behaviour the other four adapters work to reproduce.

http.use(async (ctx, next) => {
  const started = Date.now()
  await next()
  console.log(`${ctx.method} ${ctx.path} ${Date.now() - started}ms`)
})

http.koa is the raw instance. The adapter mounts @koa/router itself — Koa ships no router — and carries no prefix on it, because the base class has already applied setGlobalPrefix.

Everything is native

@koa/router accepts any method string, so every extended and WebDAV verb routes natively — including MKWORKSPACE and UPDATE, which Fastify cannot do.

Feature	Needs	Install
Body parsing	koa-bodyparser	pnpm add koa-bodyparser
Static files	koa-static	pnpm add koa-static
Multipart	@koa/multer	pnpm add @koa/multer
Views	@koa/views	pnpm add @koa/views
Signed cookies	a signed-cookie middleware + http.koa.keys	—

Koa's body is undefined until you say otherwise

Koa ships ctx.request.body as always undefined. Declaring bodyParser() installs koa-bodyparser, which is what fills ctx.body. The adapter’s limit defaults to 100 kB, deliberately smaller than koa-bodyparser’s own 1 MB.

What it cannot do

• Multipart. enableTypes is ['json', 'form', 'text']; mount @koa/multer through useRaw().
• poweredBy: false is a no-op: Koa sets no X-Powered-By of its own.
• signedCookies is {} unless a signed-cookie middleware is mounted.
• sendFile byte ranges are unsupported; maxAge and lastModified: false work.

`ctx.end()` sets 204

Koa would infer 204 from a null body anyway, so end() sets it explicitly. This is the one place where a transport makes a choice the contract left open, and it does so consistently across all five.

See also

• Mirrored adapter documentation
• Adapter matrix
• @glandjs/http