Hono #

Hono - [炎] means flame🔥 in Japanese - is a small, simple, and ultrafast web framework for Cloudflare Workers, Deno, Bun, and others. Fast, but not only fast.

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

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

export default app

Features #

• Ultrafast - the router does not use linear loops.
• Zero-dependencies - using only Service Worker and Web Standard API.
• Middleware - built-in middleware, custom middleware, and third-party middleware.
• TypeScript - first-class TypeScript support.
• Multi-platform - works on Cloudflare Workers, Fastly [email protected], Deno, or Bun.

Benchmarks #

Cloudflare Workers #

• Machine: Apple MacBook Pro, 32 GiB, M1 Pro
• Scripts: benchmarks/handle-event

Hono is fastest, compared to other routers for Cloudflare Workers.

hono - trie-router(default) x 389,510 ops/sec ±3.16% (85 runs sampled)
hono - regexp-router x 452,290 ops/sec ±2.64% (84 runs sampled)
itty-router x 206,013 ops/sec ±3.39% (90 runs sampled)
sunder x 323,131 ops/sec ±0.75% (97 runs sampled)
worktop x 191,218 ops/sec ±2.70% (91 runs sampled)
Fastest is hono - regexp-router
✨  Done in 43.56s.

Deno #

• Machine: Apple MacBook Pro, 32 GiB, M1 Pro, Deno v1.22.0
• Scripts: benchmarks/deno
• Method: autocannon -c 100 -d 40 -p 10 'http://127.0.0.1:8000/user/lookup/username/foo'

Hono is fastest, compared to other frameworks for Deno.

Another benchmark result: denosaurs/bench

Why so fast? #

Routers used in Hono are really smart.

• TrieRouter(default) - Implemented with Trie tree structure.
• RegExpRouter - Match the route with using one big Regex made before dispatch.

Hono in 1 minute #

A demonstration to create an application for Cloudflare Workers with Hono.

Not only fast #

Hono is fast. But not only fast.

Write Less, do more #

Built-in middleware make "Write Less, do more" in reality. You can use a lot of middleware without writing code from scratch. Below are examples.

• Basic Authentication
• Bearer Authentication
• Cache
• Compress
• CORS
• ETag
• html
• JSX
• JWT Authentication
• Logger
• Pretty JSON
• Serving static files
• GraphQL (coming soon)
• Firebase Authentication (coming soon)

To enable logger and Etag middleware with just this code.

import { Hono } from 'hono'
import { etag } from 'hono/etag'
import { logger } from 'hono/logger'

const app = new Hono()
app.use('*', etag(), logger())

And, the routing of Hono is so flexible. It’s easy to construct large web applications.

import { Hono } from 'hono'
import { basicAuth } from 'hono/basic-auth'

const v1 = new Hono()
v1.get('/posts', (c) => {
  return c.text('list posts')
})
  .post(basicAuth({ username, password }), (c) => {
    return c.text('created!', 201)
  })
  .get('/posts/:id', (c) => {
    const id = c.req.param('id')
    return c.text(`your id is ${id}`)
  })

const app = new Hono()
app.route('/v1', v1)

Web Standard #

Request and Response object used in Hono are extensions of the Web Standard Fetch API. If you are familiar with that, you don’t need to know more than that.

Multi-platform #

Thanks to the use of the Web Standard API, Hono works on a variety of platforms.

• Cloudflare Workers
• Fastly [email protected]
• Deno / Deno Deploy
• Bun
• Others

Developer Experience #

Hono provides fine "Developer Experience". Easy access to Request/Response thanks to the Context object. Above all, Hono is written in TypeScript. So, Hono has "Types"!

For example, the named path parameters will be literal types.