hono

What is hono?

Hono is a small, simple, and fast web framework for building web applications and APIs in Node.js. It is designed to be lightweight and efficient, making it suitable for high-performance applications.

What are hono's main functionalities?

Basic Routing

Hono allows you to define routes for your web application. In this example, a basic GET route is defined that responds with 'Hello, Hono!' when accessed.

const { Hono } = require('hono');
const app = new Hono();

app.get('/', (c) => c.text('Hello, Hono!'));

app.listen(3000);

Middleware Support

Hono supports middleware, allowing you to execute code before your route handlers. This example demonstrates a simple logger middleware that logs the request method and URL.

const { Hono } = require('hono');
const app = new Hono();

const logger = (c, next) => {
  console.log(`${c.req.method} ${c.req.url}`);
  return next();
};

app.use(logger);

app.get('/', (c) => c.text('Hello, Hono!'));

app.listen(3000);

Error Handling

Hono provides a way to handle errors globally. In this example, an error is thrown in the route handler, and the global error handler responds with a 500 status code and a message.

const { Hono } = require('hono');
const app = new Hono();

app.get('/', (c) => {
  throw new Error('Something went wrong!');
});

app.onError((err, c) => {
  c.status(500);
  return c.text('Internal Server Error');
});

app.listen(3000);

Other packages similar to hono

express

Express is a widely-used web framework for Node.js, known for its simplicity and flexibility. It offers a robust set of features for web and mobile applications, including routing, middleware support, and more. Compared to Hono, Express has a larger community and more extensive documentation, but Hono aims to be more lightweight and faster.

koa

Koa is a web framework designed by the team behind Express. It aims to be a smaller, more expressive, and more robust foundation for web applications and APIs. Koa uses async functions to help eliminate callback hell and improve error handling. Compared to Hono, Koa is more modern and has a different approach to middleware, using a stack-like structure.

fastify

Fastify is a web framework highly focused on providing the best developer experience with the least overhead and a powerful plugin architecture. It is designed for high performance and low overhead. Compared to Hono, Fastify is more feature-rich and has a more extensive ecosystem, but Hono aims to be simpler and more lightweight.

README

Hono

Hono[炎] - means flame🔥 in Japanese - is small, simple, and ultrafast web flamework for a Service Workers API based serverless such as Cloudflare Workers and Fastly Compute@Edge.

import { Hono } from 'hono'
const app = new Hono()

app.get('/', (c) => c.text('Hono!!'))

app.fire()

Features

• Ultra fast - the router is implemented with Trie-Tree structure.
• Zero dependencies - using only Web standard API.
• Middleware - builtin middleware, and you can make your own middleware.
• Optimized - for Cloudflare Workers.

Benchmark

Hono is fastest compared to other routers for Cloudflare Workers.

hono x 708,671 ops/sec ±2.58% (58 runs sampled)
itty-router x 159,610 ops/sec ±2.86% (87 runs sampled)
sunder x 322,846 ops/sec ±2.24% (86 runs sampled)
worktop x 223,625 ops/sec ±2.01% (95 runs sampled)
Fastest is hono
✨  Done in 57.83s.

Hono in 1 minute

Below is a demonstration to create an application of Cloudflare Workers with Hono.

Install

You can install from npm registry:

yarn add hono

or

npm install hono

Methods

Instance of Hono has these methods:

• app.HTTP_METHOD(path, handler)
• app.all(path, handler)
• app.route(path)
• app.use(path, middleware)
• app.fire()
• app.fetch(request, env, event)

Routing

Basic

app.HTTP_METHOD

// HTTP Methods
app.get('/', (c) => c.text('GET /'))
app.post('/', (c) => c.text('POST /'))

// Wildcard
app.get('/wild/*/card', (c) => {
  return c.text('GET /wild/*/card')
})

app.all

// Any HTTP methods
app.all('/hello', (c) => c.text('Any Method /hello'))

Named Parameter

app.get('/user/:name', (c) => {
  const name = c.req.param('name')
  ...
})

Regexp

app.get('/post/:date{[0-9]+}/:title{[a-z]+}', (c) => {
  const date = c.req.param('date')
  const title = c.req.param('title')
  ...

Chained Route

app
  .route('/api/book')
    .get(() => {...})
    .post(() => {...})
    .put(() => {...})

Custom 404 Response

You can customize 404 Not Found response:

app.get('*', (c) => {
  return c.text('Custom 404 Error', 404)
})

async/await

app.get('/fetch-url', async (c) => {
  const response = await fetch('https://example.com/')
  return c.text(`Status is ${response.status}`)
})

Middleware

Builtin Middleware

import { Hono, Middleware } from 'hono'

...

app.use('*', Middleware.poweredBy())
app.use('*', Middleware.logger())
app.use(
  '/auth/*',
  Middleware.basicAuth({
    username: 'hono',
    password: 'acoolproject',
  })
)

Available builtin middleware are listed on src/middleware.

Custom Middleware

You can write your own middleware:

// Custom logger
app.use('*', async (c, next) => {
  console.log(`[${c.req.method}] ${c.req.url}`)
  await next()
})

// Add a custom header
app.use('/message/*', async (c, next) => {
  await next()
  await c.res.headers.add('x-message', 'This is middleware!')
})

app.get('/message/hello', (c) => c.text('Hello Middleware!'))

Handling Error

app.use('*', async (c, next) => {
  try {
    await next()
  } catch (err) {
    console.error(`${err}`)
    c.res = c.text('Custom Error Message', { status: 500 })
  }
})

Complex Pattern

You can also do this:

// Output response time
app.use('*', async (c, next) => {
  await next()
  const responseTime = await c.res.headers.get('X-Response-Time')
  console.log(`X-Response-Time: ${responseTime}`)
})

// Add X-Response-Time header
app.use('*', async (c, next) => {
  const start = Date.now()
  await next()
  const ms = Date.now() - start
  await c.res.headers.append('X-Response-Time', `${ms}ms`)
})

Context

To handle Request and Reponse easily, you can use Context object:

c.req

// Get Request object
app.get('/hello', (c) => {
  const userAgent = c.req.headers.get('User-Agent')
  ...
})

// Shortcut to get a header value
app.get('/shortcut', (c) => {
  const userAgent = c.req.header('User-Agent')
  ...
})

// Query params
app.get('/search', (c) => {
  const query = c.req.query('q')
  ...
})

// Captured params
app.get('/entry/:id', (c) => {
  const id = c.req.param('id')
  ...
})

Shortcuts for Response

app.get('/welcome', (c) => {
  c.header('X-Message', 'Hello!')
  c.header('Content-Type', 'text/plain')
  c.status(201)
  c.statusText('201 Content Created')

  return c.body('Thank you for comming')

  /*
  Same as:
  return new Response('Thank you for comming', {
    status: 201,
    statusText: '201 Content Created',
    headers: {
      'X-Message': 'Hello',
      'Content-Type': 'text/plain',
      'Content-Length: '22'
    }
  })
  */
})

c.text()

Render text as Content-Type:text/plain:

app.get('/say', (c) => {
  return c.text('Hello!')
})

c.json()

Render JSON as Content-Type:application/json:

app.get('/api', (c) => {
  return c.json({ message: 'Hello!' })
})

c.html()

Render HTML as Content-Type:text/html:

app.get('/', (c) => {
  return c.html('<h1>Hello! Hono!</h1>')
})

c.redirect()

Redirect, default status code is 302:

app.get('/redirect', (c) => c.redirect('/'))
app.get('/redirect-permanently', (c) => c.redirect('/', 301))

c.res

// Response object
app.use('/', (c, next) => {
  next()
  c.res.headers.append('X-Debug', 'Debug message')
})

c.event

// FetchEvent object
app.use('*', async (c, next) => {
  c.event.waitUntil(
    ...
  )
  await next()
})

c.env

// Environment object for Cloudflare Workers
app.get('*', async c => {
  const counter = c.env.COUNTER
  ...
})

fire

app.fire() do:

addEventListener('fetch', (event) => {
  event.respondWith(this.handleEvent(event))
})

fetch

app.fetch() is for Cloudflare Module Worker syntax.

export default {
  fetch(request: Request, env: Env, event: FetchEvent) {
    return app.fetch(request, env, event)
  },
}

/*
or just do this:
export default app
*/

Cloudflare Workers with Hono

Using wrangler or miniflare, you can develop the application locally and publish it with few commands.

Let's write your first code for Cloudflare Workers with Hono.

1. Install Wrangler

Install Cloudflare Command Line "Wrangler"

npm i @cloudflare/wrangler -g

2. npm init

Make npm skeleton directory.

mkdir hono-example
cd hono-example
npm init -y

3. wrangler init

Init as a wrangler project.

wrangler init

4. npm install hono

Install hono from npm registry.

npm i hono

5. Write your app

Only 4 lines!!

import { Hono } from 'hono'
const app = new Hono()

app.get('/', (c) => c.text('Hello! Hono!'))

app.fire()

6. Run

Run the development server locally. Then, access like http://127.0.0.1:8787/ in your Web browser.

wrangler dev

Publish

Deploy to Cloudflare. That's all!

wrangler publish

Related projects

Implementation of the router is inspired by goblin. API design is inspired by express and koa. itty-router, Sunder, and worktop are the other routers or frameworks for Cloudflare Workers.

• express https://github.com/expressjs/express
• koa https://github.com/koajs/koa
• itty-router https://github.com/kwhitley/itty-router
• Sunder https://github.com/SunderJS/sunder
• goblin https://github.com/bmf-san/goblin
• worktop https://github.com/lukeed/worktop

Contributing

Contributions Welcome! You can contribute by the following way:

• Write or fix documents
• Write code of middleware
• Fix bugs
• Refactor the code
• etc.

If you can, let's make Hono together!

Author

Yusuke Wada https://github.com/yusukebe

License

Distributed under the MIT License. See LICENSE for more information.