Hono Web Framework

Hono is designed for speed, small footprint, and multi-runtime compatibility:

• Ultrafast: Uses high-performance routers like RegExpRouter instead of linear loops.
• Lightweight: The hono/tiny preset is under 12kB. It has zero dependencies and relies solely on Web Standard APIs.
• Multi-runtime: The same codebase runs on Cloudflare Workers, Fastly Compute, Deno, Bun, AWS Lambda, Lambda@Edge, and Node.js.
• Batteries Included: Provides built-in middleware, support for custom middleware, and third-party middleware.
• Delightful DX: Offers clean APIs and first-class TypeScript support.

Third-party middleware is kept separate from the Hono core. This allows middleware to depend on other libraries or target specific environments (e.g., Cloudflare Workers, GraphQL, Firebase, Sentry) without bloating the core package.

If you want to contribute middleware to the official ecosystem:

1. Middleware can be distributed under the @honojs namespace.
2. The honojs/middleware monorepo manages these official extensions.
3. Before starting, create an issue to discuss your proposed middleware.

To start a new Hono project, use the official scaffolding command. This will guide you through the setup process for your preferred runtime.

npm create hono@latest

This benchmark suite compares the performance of various HTTP routers, including find-my-way, express, koa-router, koa-tree-router, trek-router, @medley/router, and Hono's own RegExpRouter and TrieRouter.

To run the benchmarks, first install the dependencies using Bun, then execute the specific command for your target runtime.

# Install dependencies
bun install --frozen-lockfile

# Run benchmarks for Node.js
bun run bench:node

# Run benchmarks for Bun
bun run bench:bun

To measure the overhead of app.fetch() in-process, run the benchmark script using bun or node from the root of the repository.

bun bench.mts
node bench.mts

In v2.1.0, c.req.parseBody() was restricted to parsing FormData with content types multipart/form or application/x-www-form-urlencoded. It no longer parses JSON, text, or ArrayBuffers. Use the specific methods for those types instead.

// multipart/form or application/x-www-form-urlencoded
const data = await c.req.parseBody()

// For other types
const jsonData = await c.req.json() // for JSON body
const text = await c.req.text() // for text body
const arrayBuffer = await c.req.arrayBuffer() // for ArrayBuffer

Before running the Hono HTTP benchmarks, ensure you have the following installed:

• Bun: version 1.0 or higher.
• bombardier: An HTTP benchmarking tool. On macOS, you can install it via Homebrew using brew install bombardier.

In Deno, do not import middleware from hono/mod.ts as it does not export them. Instead, import middleware from hono/middleware.ts.

import { Hono } from 'https://deno.land/x/hono/mod.ts'
import { poweredBy, basicAuth } from 'https://deno.land/x/hono/middleware.ts'

The cookie and body-parse middlewares are obsolete. Use the built-in methods on the request object instead:

• Cookies: Use c.req.cookie(name) to parse and c.cookie(name, value) to set cookies.
• Body Parsing: Use c.req.parseBody() to parse request bodies (specifically for form data).

// Parse cookie
app.get('/entry/:id', (c) => {
  const value = c.req.cookie('name')
  ...
})

// Set cookie
app.get('/', (c) => {
  c.cookie('delicious_cookie', 'choco')
  return c.text('Do you like cookie?')
})

// Parse Request body
app.post('', (c) => {
  const body = c.req.parseBody()
  ...
})

To run the HTTP performance benchmarks locally to compare the main vs current versions of Hono, navigate to the benchmark directory and use bun to execute the benchmark script. This requires bun and bombardier to be installed on your system.

cd benchmarks/http-server
bun run benchmark.ts