Fast, lightweight and zero dependency framework for bunjs 🚀
- 🍥 Colston.js
Bun is the lastest and arguably the fastest runtime environment for javascript, similar to node and deno. Bun uses JSC (JavaScriptCore) engine unlike node and deno which is the part of the reason why it's faster than node and deno.
Bun is written in a low-level manual memory management programming language called ZIG.
Bun supports ~90% of the native nodejs APIs including fs
, path
etc. and also distribute it's packages using npm hence both yarn
and npm
are supported in bun.
Colstonjs is a fast, minimal and higly configurable typescript based api framework
highly inspired by Expressjs and fastify for building high performance APIs, colstonjs is completely built on bunjs.
🐎 Bun - Bun needs to be installed locally on your development machine.
💻 To install bun head over to the offical website and follow the installation instructions.
🧑💻 To install coltsonjs run
$ bun add colstonjs
Although colstonjs is distributed under npm, colstonjs is only available for bun, node and deno are not currently supported.
Importing the colstonjs into the application
import Colston from "colstonjs";
// initializing Colston
const serverOptions = {
port: 8000,
env: "development"
};
// initialize app with server options
const app: Colston = new Colston(serverOptions);
A simple get request
// server.ts
...
app.get("/", function(ctx) {
return ctx.status(200).text("OK"); // OK
});
...
To allow the application to accept requests, we have to call the start()
method with an optional
port and/or callback function.
This will start an http
sever that is listening on all interfaces (0.0.0.0
) on the specified port.
// server.ts
...
server.start(port?: number, cb?: Function);
-
port
number can be passed into theapp
through the server options or the as the first argument of thestart()
method. If the the port number is passed as part of the server options and also in thestart()
method, then port number passed into to thestart()
takes priority. If neither is provided, then the app will default to port3000
-
callback
method is immediately invoked once the connection is successfully established and the application is ready to accept requests.
// server.ts
import Colston, { type Context } from "colstonjs";
const app: Colston = new Colston({ env: "development" });
app.set("port", 8000);
app.get("/", (ctx: Context) => {
return ctx.status(200).json({ message: "Hello World!" });
});
// start the server
app.start(app.get('port'), () => console.log(`server listening on port ${app.get("port")}`));
// server.ts
import Colston, { type Context } from "colstonjs";
const app: Colston = new Colston({ env: "development" });
app.get("/", async (ctx: Context) => {
const body = await ctx.request.json();
const body2 = await ctx.request.text();
return ctx.status(200).json({ body, body2 });
});
app.start(8000);
// server.ts
import Colston, { type Context } from "colstonjs";
const app: Colston = new Colston({ env: "development" });
app.get("/user/:id/name/:name", async (ctx: Context) => {
const user = ctx.request.params;
// make an api call to a backend datastore a to retrieve usre details
const userDetails = await getUserDetails(details.id); // e.g: { id: 12345, name: "jane"}
return ctx.status(200).json({ user: userDetails});
});
app.start(8000);
// server.ts
import Colston, { type Context } from "colstonjs";
const app: Colston = new Colston({ env: "development" });
app.get('/?name&age', async (ctx: Context) => {
const query = ctx.request.query;
return ctx.status(200).json(query); // { name: "jane", age: 50 }
});
app.start(8000);
Colstonjs also provide the flexibility of method chaining, create one app instance and chain all methods on that single instance.
// server.ts
import Colston, { type Context } from "colstonjs";
const app: Colston = new Colston({ env: "development" });
app
.get("/one", (ctx: Context) => {
return ctx.status(200).text("One");
})
.post("/two", (ctx: Context) => {
return ctx.status(200).text("Two");
})
.patch("/three", (ctx: Context) => {
return ctx.status(200).text("Three");
});
app.start(8000);
Follow the steps below to run the demo note-taking api application
in the examples
directory.
- Clone this repository
- Change directory into the note-app folder by running
cd examples/note-app
- Start the http server to listen on port
8000
by runningbun app.js
- User your favourite
http client
(e.g Postman) to make requests to thelistening http server
.
Colstonjs support both route
level middleware as well as app
level middleware.
This is a middleware which will be called on each request made to the server, one use case can be for logging.
// logger.ts
export function logger(ctx) {
const { pathname } = new URL(ctx.request.url);
console.info([new Date()], " - - " + ctx.request.method + " " + pathname + " HTTP 1.1" + " - ");
}
// server.ts
import Colston, { type Context } from "colstonjs";
import { logger } from "./logger";
const app: Colston = new Colston({ env: "development" });
// middleware
app.use(logger); // [2022-07-16T01:01:00.327Z] - - GET / HTTP 1.1 -
app.get("/", (ctx: Context) => {
return ctx.status(200).text("Hello logs...");
});
app.start(8000);
The .use()
accepts k
numbers of middleware function.
...
app.use(fn-1, fn-2, fn-3, ..., fn-k)
...
Colston on the other hand allows you to add a middleware function in-between the route path and the handler function.
// request-id.ts
export function requestID(ctx) {
ctx.request.id = crypto.randomBytes(18).toString('hex');
}
// server.ts
import crypto from "crypto";
import Colston, { type Context } from "colstonjs";
import { requestID } from "./request-id";
const app: Colston = new Colston({ env: "development" });
app.get("/", requestID, (ctx: Context) => {
return ctx.status(200).text(`id: ${ctx.request.id}`); // id: 410796b6d64e3dcc1802f290dc2f32155c5b
});
app.start(8000);
It is also worthy to note that we can also have k
numbers of route-level
middleware functions
// server.ts
...
app.get("/", middleware-1, middleware-2, middleware-3, ..., middleware-k, (ctx: Context) => {
return ctx.status(200).text(`id: ${ctx.request.id}`);
});
...
ctx.locals
is a plain javascript object that is specifically added to allow sharing of data amongst the chain of middlewares and/or handler functions.
// server.ts
...
let requestCount = 0;
app.post("/request-count", (ctx, next) => {
/**
* req.locals can be used to pass
* data from one middleware to another
*/
ctx.locals.requestCount = requestCount;
next();
}, (ctx, next) => {
++ctx.locals.requestCount;
next();
}, (ctx) => {
let count = ctx.locals.requestCount;
return ctx.status(200).text(count); // 1
});
Router class provide a way to separate router specific declaration/blocks from the app logic, by providing that extra abstraction layer for your project.
// router.ts
import Router from "Router";
// instantiate the router class
const router1 = new Router();
const router2 = new Router();
// define user routes - can be in a separate file or module.
router1.post('/user', (ctx) => { return ctx.status(200).json({ user }) });
router1.get('/users', (ctx) => { return ctx.json({ users }) });
router1.delete('/user?id', (ctx) => { return ctx.status(204).head() });
// define the notes route - can also be in separate module.
router2.get('/note/:id', (ctx) => { return ctx.json({ note }) });
router2.get('/notes', (ctx) => { return ctx.json({ notes }) });
router2.post('/note', (ctx) => { return ctx.status(201).json({ note }) });
export { router1, router2 };
// server.ts
import Colston from "colstonjs";
import { router1, router2 } from "./router";
const app: Colston = new Colston();
app.all(router1, router2);
// other routes can still be defined here
app.get("/", (ctx) => {
return ctx.status(200).text("Welcome to colstonjs framework for bun");
});
app.start(8000)
The app.all()
method takes in k numbers of router instance objects e.g app.all(router-1, router-2, ..., router-k);
. The example folder contains a full note taking backend app that utilizes this pattern.
We can cache simple data which will leave throughout the application instance lifecycle.
import Colston, { type Context } from "colstonjs";
const app: Colston = new Colston({ env: "development" });
// set properties to cache
app.set("age", 50);
app.set("name", "jane doe");
// check if a key exists in the cache
app.has("age"); // true
app.has("name"); // true
// retrieve the value stored in a given key
app.get("age"); // 50
app.get("name"); // jane doe
app.start(8000);
Errors are handled internally by colstonjs, however this error handler method
can aslo be customised.
// index.ts
import Colston, { type Context } from "colstonjs";
const app: Colston = new Colston({ env: "development" });
// a broken route
app.get("/error", (ctx) => {
throw new Error("This is a broken route");
});
// Custom error handler
app.error = async function (error) {
console.error("This is an error...");
return Response.json(JSON.stringify(
// return custom error here
const err = JSON.stringify(error);
new Error(error.message || "An error occurred" + err);
), { status: 500 });
}
app.start(8000);
Click to expand
Benchmarking was performed using k6 load testing library.
Colstonjs
Colsonjs on bunjs
runtime environment
import Colston from "colstonjs";
const app = new Colston({ env: "development" });
app.get("/", (ctx) => {
return ctx.text("OK");
});
app.start(8000)
$ ./k6 run index.js
/\ |‾‾| /‾‾/ /‾‾/
/\ / \ | |/ / / /
/ \/ \ | ( / ‾‾\
/ \ | |\ \ | (‾) |
/ __________ \ |__| \__\ \_____/ .io
execution: local
script: index.js
output: -
scenarios: (100.00%) 1 scenario, 100 max VUs, 40s max duration (incl. graceful stop):
* default: 100 looping VUs for 10s (gracefulStop: 30s)
running (10.0s), 000/100 VUs, 240267 complete and 0 interrupted iterations
default ✓ [======================================] 100 VUs 10s
✓ success
checks.........................: 100.00% ✓ 240267 ✗ 0
data_received..................: 16 MB 1.6 MB/s
data_sent......................: 19 MB 1.9 MB/s
http_req_blocked...............: avg=1.42µs min=0s med=1µs max=9.24ms p(90)=1µs p(95)=2µs
http_req_connecting............: avg=192ns min=0s med=0s max=2.18ms p(90)=0s p(95)=0s
http_req_duration..............: avg=4.1ms min=89µs med=3.71ms max=41.18ms p(90)=5.3ms p(95)=6.53ms
{ expected_response:true }...: avg=4.1ms min=89µs med=3.71ms max=41.18ms p(90)=5.3ms p(95)=6.53ms
http_req_failed................: 0.00% ✓ 0 ✗ 240267
http_req_receiving.............: avg=24.17µs min=7µs med=12µs max=15.01ms p(90)=18µs p(95)=21µs
http_req_sending...............: avg=6.33µs min=3µs med=4µs max=14.78ms p(90)=7µs p(95)=8µs
http_req_tls_handshaking.......: avg=0s min=0s med=0s max=0s p(90)=0s p(95)=0s
http_req_waiting...............: avg=4.07ms min=75µs med=3.69ms max=41.16ms p(90)=5.27ms p(95)=6.48ms
http_reqs......................: 240267 24011.563111/s
iteration_duration.............: avg=4.15ms min=117.88µs med=3.74ms max=41.25ms p(90)=5.37ms p(95)=6.62ms
iterations.....................: 240267 24011.563111/s
vus............................: 100 min=100 max=100
vus_max........................: 100 min=100 max=100
Express
Expressjs on nodejs
runtime environment
const express = require("express");
const app = express();
app.get("/", (req, res) => {
res.send("OK");
});
app.listen(8000);
$ ~/k6 run index.js
/\ |‾‾| /‾‾/ /‾‾/
/\ / \ | |/ / / /
/ \/ \ | ( / ‾‾\
/ \ | |\ \ | (‾) |
/ __________ \ |__| \__\ \_____/ .io
execution: local
script: index.js
output: -
scenarios: (100.00%) 1 scenario, 100 max VUs, 40s max duration (incl. graceful stop):
* default: 100 looping VUs for 10s (gracefulStop: 30s)
running (10.0s), 000/100 VUs, 88314 complete and 0 interrupted iterations
default ✓ [======================================] 100 VUs 10s
✓ success
checks.........................: 100.00% ✓ 88314 ✗ 0
data_received..................: 20 MB 2.0 MB/s
data_sent......................: 7.1 MB 705 kB/s
http_req_blocked...............: avg=1.54µs min=0s med=1µs max=2.04ms p(90)=1µs p(95)=2µs
http_req_connecting............: avg=451ns min=0s med=0s max=1.99ms p(90)=0s p(95)=0s
http_req_duration..............: avg=11.28ms min=1.22ms med=10.04ms max=90.96ms p(90)=15.04ms p(95)=18.71ms
{ expected_response:true }...: avg=11.28ms min=1.22ms med=10.04ms max=90.96ms p(90)=15.04ms p(95)=18.71ms
http_req_failed................: 0.00% ✓ 0 ✗ 88314
http_req_receiving.............: avg=18.18µs min=10µs med=15µs max=10.16ms p(90)=22µs p(95)=25µs
http_req_sending...............: avg=6.53µs min=3µs med=5µs max=12.61ms p(90)=8µs p(95)=9µs
http_req_tls_handshaking.......: avg=0s min=0s med=0s max=0s p(90)=0s p(95)=0s
http_req_waiting...............: avg=11.25ms min=1.2ms med=10.01ms max=90.93ms p(90)=15ms p(95)=18.68ms
http_reqs......................: 88314 8818.015135/s
iteration_duration.............: avg=11.32ms min=1.25ms med=10.08ms max=91.01ms p(90)=15.08ms p(95)=18.76ms
iterations.....................: 88314 8818.015135/s
vus............................: 100 min=100 max=100
vus_max........................: 100 min=100 max=100
From the above results we can see that Colsonjs on bun handles ~ 2.72x number of requests per second when compared with Expressjs on node, benchmarking files can be found in this repository.
PRs for features, enhancements and bug fixes are welcomed. ✨ You can also look at the todo file for feature contributions. 🙏🏽
This software is distributed under the MIT license.
See the TODO doc here, feel free to also add to the list by editing the TODO file.
Coded with 💙 by Chukwuemeka Ajima
Although this version is fairly stable, it is actively still under development so also is bunjs and might contain some bugs, hence, not ideal for a production app.