This miniature framework is one of my favourite tools! Hono is a set of dev tools for building web servers on any JavaScript runtime (Deno, Node, Cloudflare, Fastly, Lambda and others), but not only!
Let me show you what it can do.
Create new app with e.g. deno init --npm hono@latest, follow the prompts and once ready start it with the command provided in README.md, e.g.:
deno task start
# Task start deno run --allow-net main.ts
# Listening on http://0.0.0.0:8000/
If you open http://0.0.0.0:8000/ You can enjoy Hello Hono!.
Let's make it a tad bit more sophisticated!
Create a file called HomePage.tsx with the following contents:
import { css, Style } from "hono/css";
export default function HomePage() {
return (
<html>
<head>
<title>Ho-ho-hono!</title>
<Style />
</head>
<body className={style.body}>
<main>
<h1>Hello, Hono!</h1>
<p>Wow! It works!</p>
<img
src="https://hono.dev/images/logo-small.png"
alt="Hono logo: fire"
/>
</main>
</body>
</html>
);
}
const style = {
body: css`
background-color: black;
color: white;
display: flex;
flex-direction: column;
main {
margin: 2rem auto;
text-align: center;
}
`,
};
Then, adjust main.ts to render newly created page instead of text:
import { Context, Hono } from "hono";
import HomePage from "./HomePage.tsx"; // <- import page
const app = new Hono();
app.get("/", (c: Context) => {
return c.html(HomePage()); // <-- render html page
});
Deno.serve(app.fetch);
You could also change main.ts to main.tsx and use JSX instead if you prefer:
app.get("/", (c: Context) => {
return c.html(<HomePage />);
});
Stop and start the server again and you should be able to see a fully styled html page:
If you want to keep editing and have the server restarted automatically just add --watch to the start command in deno.json:
{
"imports": {
"hono": "jsr:@hono/hono@^4.6.13"
},
"tasks": {
"start": "deno run --allow-net --watch main.ts"
},
"compilerOptions": {
"jsx": "precompile",
"jsxImportSource": "hono/jsx"
}
}
Pretty cool stack right out of the box, isn't it? And what I like about Hono is that it's minimalistic: hono/jsx or hono/css are tiny (unlike e.g. React) and yet have the same interface.
But my favourite feature is Hono's modularity! Let's say you're making a complex web service, consisting of many features, e.g.:
features/
users/
main.ts
posts/
main.ts
comments/
main.ts
mod.ts
Each feature/*/main.ts could have the following code:
import { Context, Hono } from "hono";
const app = new Hono();
app.get("/{:id}", (c: Context) => {
const { id } = c.req.param();
return c.json({
id,
});
});
app.post("/", async (c: Context) => {
const payload = await c.req.json();
return c.json({
...payload,
});
});
export default app;
And then features/mod.ts could join those three features together like so:
import { Hono } from "hono";
import users from "./users/main.ts";
import posts from "./posts/main.ts";
import comments from "./comments/main.ts";
const app = new Hono();
app.route("/users", users);
app.route("/posts", posts);
app.route("/comments", comments);
export default app;
And finally, all these prefixed features could be added to root main.ts:
import { Context, Hono } from "hono";
import HomePage from "./HomePage.tsx";
import features from "./features/mod.ts";
const app = new Hono();
app.get("/", (c: Context) => {
return c.html(HomePage());
});
app.route("/api", features);
Deno.serve(app.fetch);
Load e.g. http://0.0.0.0:8000/api/users/123 and you should see the following JSON:
{
"id": "123"
}
Imagine the possibilities! Not only can you mix and match little apps as you want you can also easily test them!
I definitely recommend trying Hono out and checking all the helpers and utils it has to offer!
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Top comments (4)
Really sick what a DX this opens up for.
In the PHP-world we hat Inertia for a similar DX, connecting controllers with the views in a really easy way. Happy this seems to be slowly arriving in the JS-world too
I think JSX is indeed a spiritual successor of PHP in this way with a bonus that you can execute same code on the browser as well. Does PHP run on edge nowadays or not yet?
not sure. Unfortunately haven't worked with PHP the past 2 years
Depends on how you look at it :) Perhaps, fortunately :) What are you coding on nowadays?