barehttp

Full-featured slim webserver for microservices with extremely low overhead and ready for production

Table of Contents

• Requirements
• Quick start
• Usage
• API
• Features
• Support

Requirements

Node.js >= 14.8

Quick start

Create directory

mkdir backend-application
cd backend-application

Install the service

npm

npm i barehttp --save

yarn

yarn add barehttp

Usage

Basic

import { BareHttp, logMe } from 'barehttp';

const app = new BareHttp();

app.route.get({
  route: '/route',
  handler: function routeGet(flow) {
    flow.json({ everything: 'OK' });
  })
});


// you can chain the routes
app.route
  .post({
    route: '/route',
    handler: async function routePost(flow) {
      return 'RESPONSE POST';
    },
  })
  .route.patch({
    route: '/route',
    handler: async function routePatch(flow) {
      return 'RESPONSE PATCH';
  })

// Define a middleware
app.use((flow) => {
  logMe.info('my middleware');
});

app.start((address) => {
  console.log(`BareServer started at ${address}`);
});

async-await

import { BareHttp, logMe } from 'barehttp';

const app = new BareHttp({ logging: true });

 app.route.get({
  route:'/route',
  handler: async function routeV1() {
    return { promised: 'data' };
  })
});

// Define a middleware
app.use(async (flow) => {
  logMe.info('my middleware');
  await someAuthenticationFlow();
});

app.start((address) => {
  console.log(`BareServer started at ${address}`);
});

API

BareHttp(BareOptions) (Class)

An instance of the application

BareOptions (Object)

Options submitted to the server at initialization

middlewares? (Array<(flow: BareRequest) => Promise | void>)

If provided, this will apply an array of middlewares to each incoming request. The order of the array is the order of middlewares to apply

serverPort? (Number)

Default 3000

Listening port

serverAddress? (String)

Default '0.0.0.0'

Address to bind the web server to

context? (Boolean)

Default false

Enables request context storage accessible through all application importing import { context } from 'barehttp';

logging? (Boolean)

Default false

Enable request/response logging, format varies from production or development environments, though to change use e.g. NODE_ENV=production

ws? (Boolean)

Default false

Enable WebSocket support through ws package.

wsOptions? (Object)

Refer to ws documentation.

errorHandlerMiddleware? ((err: any, flow: BareRequest) => void)

If provided, will set a custom error handler to catch the bubbled errors from the handlers

requestTimeFormat? (String: 's' | 'ms')

Default 's' - seconds

Request execution time format in seconds or milliseconds

cookies? (Boolean)

Control over cookies. If enabled this will turn on automatic cookies decoding, if you want to set up more settings for this (e.g. signed cookies), next option is available

cookiesOptions? (CookieManagerOptions)

To set options for the cookies decoding/encoding

reverseDns? (Boolean)

If enabled, and also with logging: true, will try to log the resolved reverse DNS of the first hop for remote ip of the client (first proxy). Logs follow an Apache Common Log Format

statisticsReport? (Boolean)

Default false

Exposes a basic report with the routes usage under GET /_report route

---

BareServer.use ((flow: BareRequest) => Promise | void)

Attach a middleware after the middlewares optional array. The order of the middlewares is followed by code declarations order.

---

BareServer.route.get | post | patch | put | delete | options | head | declare (Function)

To set a route for get | post | patch | put | delete | options | head with following parameters:

• route (String) - should follow a format of /your_route, including params as /your_route/:param
• options (Object) - RouteOptions
• handler (Function) - A function with the signature (flow: BareRequest) => Promise<any> | any
• method (Array) - if the method is declare you have to indicate an array of methods to declare the route e.g. ['get', 'post'] Example

app.route.get({
  route: '/route',
  options: { timeout: 2000 },
  handler: async (flow) => {
    return 'My route response';
  },
});

app.route.declare({
  route: '/declared_route',
  handler: () => {
    return 'My declared route response';
  },
  methods: ['post', 'patch'],
});

BareServer.runtimeRoute.get | post | patch | put | delete | options | head | declare (Function)

Same as the above routes API, but you can only declare them when the server is listening

app.runtimeRoute
  .get({
    route: '/route',
    options: { timeout: 2000 },
    handler: async (flow) => {
      return 'My route response';
    },
  })
  .declare({
    route: '/declared_runtime_route',
    handler: () => {
      return 'My declared runtime route response';
    },
    methods: ['post', 'patch'],
  });

RouteOptions (Object)

If set, provide per-route options for behavior handling

disableCache? (Boolean)

Disables all cache headers for the response. This overrides any other cache setting.

cache? (CacheOptions)

If set, provides a granular cache headers handling per route.

timeout? (Number)

Request timeout value in ms. This will cancel the request only for this route if time expired

---

BareServer.ws? (WebSocketServer)

Based on ws package, for internals please refer to external WebSocketServer for documentation.

This particular implementation works out easily for WebSockets interaction for pushing data to server from the clients and waiting for some answer in async.

Also exposes an way to keep pushing messages to the Client from the Server on server handle through internal clients list. (WIP optimizing this)

WebSocketServer.declareReceiver ((Data, UserClient, WSClient, MessageEvent) => Promise<M> | M)

This is the main 'handler' function for any kind of Client request. If there's a response to that push from the client the return should contain it, otherwise if the response is void there will be no answer to the client side.

• Data: is the data received from the client for this exact Type
• UserClient: is an optional client defined on the stage of Upgrade to provide some closured client data to be able to know what Client is exactly making the request to the Server
• WSClient: raw instance of ws.Client & { userClient: UC }
• MessageEvent: raw instance of ws.MessageClient

Code Example:

app.ws?.declareReceiver<{ ok: string }>({
  type: 'BASE_TYPE',
  handler: async (data, client) => {
    // do your async or sync operations here
    // return the response if you need to send an answer
    return { cool: 'some answer', client };
  },
});

WebSocketServer.defineUpgrade ((IncomingRequest) => Promise<M> | M)

To de able to handle authorization or any other previous operation before opening and upgrading an incoming client's request. If this function is not initialized with the callback, all incoming connections will be accepted by default

app.ws?.defineUpgrade(async (req) => {
  // you can do some async or sync operation here
  // the returning of this function will be
  // defined as the `UserClient` and attached to the `ws.Client` instance
  return { access: true, client: {...properties of the client} };
});

---

BareRequest (Class)

An instance of the request passed through to middlewares and handlers

cm? (CookiesManager)

Access to the CookiesManager instance attached to the request.

CookiesManager (Class)

Internal methods to work with cookies

setCookie (Function)

clearCookie (Function)

getHeader (Function)

Get an exact header stored to return with this request to the client

getCookie (Function)

Get an exact client cookie of this request

getCookies (Function)

Get all cookies of this request

disableCache (Function)

Imperatively disables cache, does the same as disableCache: true in RouteOptions

setCache (Function)

Imperatively sets the cache, does the same as cache: CacheOptions in RouteOptions

addHeader (Function)

Adds a header outgoing header string as a (key, value) addHeader(header, value). Can not overwrite.

addHeaders (Function)

Adds outgoing headers in a "batch", merges provided headers object { [header: string]: value } to already existing headers. Can not overwrite.

setHeader (Function)

Does the same as addHeader but overrides the value.

setHeaders (Function)

Does the same as addHeaders but overrides the value.

status (Function)

Set a status for the response

sendStatus (Function)

Set a status for the response and send it (end the request)

stream (Function)

Stream (pipe) a response to the client

json (Function)

Send a JSON response to the client (will attempt to stringify safely a provided object to JSON)

send (Function)

Send a text/buffer response to the client

Features

Some of the features are in progress.

• Request wide context storage and incorporated tracing (ready for cloud)
• UID (adopted or generated)
• WebSocket server exposure
• handy WebSocket interaction tools, for authorization, etc.
• Request-Processing-Time header and value
• Promised or conventional middlewares
• Logging and serialized with pino
• Routes usage report and endpoint
• Cache headers handy handling, per route
• Cookies creation/parsing
• CORS middleware options
• Request execution cancellation by timeout
• Bulk/chaining routes declaration
• Runtime routes hot swapping
• runtime validation schema generation per route response types (on project compile/on launch)
• middlewares per route
• swagger OpenAPI 3.0 on /docs endpoint
• swagger OpenAPI 3.0 scheme on /docs_raw endpoint
• optional export of generated schema to a location (yaml, json)
• streaming/receiving of chunked multipart
• runtime route params or query validation upon declared types (on project compile/on launch)

Runtime schema validation on response (EXPERIMENTAL)

This feature enables a runtime check for the returned value for a route, for now it only works for return statements of the routes declared in handlers.

Please write your return statements with plain response objects within the handler or controller function.

To enable this feature you need to set up the following:

• On BareHttp settings set: enableSchemaValidation: true
• On BareHttp settings set: declaredRoutesPaths: [...array of paths to routes],
• On route.<method> declaration set: options: { builtInRuntime: { output: true } }

Benchmarks

Done on MacBook Pro with M1 Pro processor. No logs enabled. NODE_ENV=production is set. All settings set to default.

BareHttp

Express

Fastify

Support

Please open an issue if you have any questions or need support

License

Licensed under MIT.

Konstantin Knyazev