it's a much faster, leaner, express.js on the edge.
you can't run traditional http servers in edge sandbox worker environments.
frameworks like these target deno deploy, cloudflare workers, aws lambdas, etc.
they are small to fit in worker 1mb~ limits and use browser apis instead of node apis to fit the env.
bonus: sharing the same apis on the server and client also result in being able to share code client/server side.
You'd only care if you were in the "serverless" field, and then you'd likely already know about Hono since it's linked in many documentations like Supabase, Cloudflare, Deno, etc.
But you may not know about Hono because there are many options and some ways to be in serverless without seeing it yet and it's the newest framework I know of. (also my favorite so far other than raw deno)
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This particular release was linked since it's one update that turns it into a real framework like Next or Astro.
They added 3 major features:
- Static Site Generation
- Client Components
- File-based Routing
Static site generation (SSG) would mean certain routes compile at build time and the worker won't compute them on the edge.
Client components means they now support client side rendering (CSR), before Hono was only used for server side rendering (SSR).
File-based routing is instead of coding your paths, the folder structure is used for routing, similar to Next which mimics how traditional http web serving works.
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This is important for users of Hono as it unlocks features that exist in larger frameworks while still staying extremely minimal and flexible.
All of the code examples look like a slightly different syntax for express.js.
So it's a server side javascript framework for handling HTTP requests?
Since it targets multiple runtimes, I suppose it's "express.js but without the node.js dependency?".
I feel like that's closer, but I'm still missing the "why should I care?" part.