HyperExpress: High Performance Node.js Webserver

Powered by uWebSockets.js

Motivation

HyperExpress aims to be a simple yet performant HTTP & Websocket Server. Combined with the power of uWebsockets.js, a Node.js binding of uSockets written in C++, HyperExpress allows developers to unlock higher throughput for their web applications with their existing hardware. This can allow many web applications to become much more performant on optimized data serving endpoints without having to scale hardware.

Some of the prominent highlights are:

• Simplified HTTP & Websocket API
• Server-Sent Events Support
• Multipart File Uploading Support
• Modular Routers & Middlewares Support
• Multiple Host/Domain Support Over SSL
• Limited Express.js API Compatibility Through Shared Methods/Properties

See > [Benchmarks] for performance metrics against other webservers in real world deployments.

Documentation

HyperExpress v7 supports the active even-numbered Node.js release lines 22, 24, and 26 and can be installed using Node Package Manager (npm). HyperExpress remains CommonJS-only and preserves its existing snake_case API.

npm i hyper-express

HyperExpress uses the native uWebSockets.js addon. Its prebuilt binaries support Tier 1 macOS and Windows platforms, and glibc-based Tier 1 Linux distributions. Alpine Linux uses musl instead of glibc; plain Alpine and Alpine with gcompat are not supported because the native addon can terminate with SIGSEGV. Use a Debian or Ubuntu based Node.js image for reliable container deployments.

• See > [Migrating from v6 to v7] for breaking changes and newly exposed APIs.
• See > [Native lifecycle contract] for the audited uWebSockets.js ownership, callback-memory, and option-range rules.
• See > [Examples & Snippets] for small and easy-to-use snippets with HyperExpress.
• See > [Server] for creating a webserver and working with the Server component.
• See > [Router] for working with the modular Router component.
• See > [Request] for working with the Request component made available through handlers.
• See > [Response] for working with the Response component made available through handlers.
• See > [Websocket] for working with Websockets in HyperExpress.
• See > [Middlewares] for working with global and route-specific Middlewares in HyperExpress.
• See > [SSEventStream] for working with Server-Sent Events based streaming in HyperExpress.
• See > [MultipartField] for working with multipart requests and File Uploading in HyperExpress.
• See > [SessionEngine] for working with cookie based web Sessions in HyperExpress.
• See > [LiveDirectory] for implementing static file/asset serving functionality into HyperExpress.
• See > [HostManager] for supporting requests over muliple hostnames in HyperExpress.

Encountering Problems?

• HyperExpress is mostly compatible with Express but not 100% therefore you may encounter some middlewares not working out of the box. In this scenario, you must either write your own polyfill or omit the middleware to continue.
• The uWebsockets.js version header is disabled by default. You may opt-out of this behavior by setting an environment variable called KEEP_UWS_HEADER to a truthy value such as 1 or true.
• Still having problems? Open an > [Issue] with details about what led up to the problem including error traces, route information etc etc.

Testing Changes

To run HyperExpress functionality tests locally on your machine, you must follow the steps below.

1. Clone the HyperExpress repository to your machine.
2. Run npm ci in the root directory. Test-only dependencies are installed from the root lockfile.
3. Run npm test for runtime tests.
4. Run npm run test:types for positive and negative TypeScript fixtures.
5. Run npm run test:load for the heavier HTTP, multipart, abort, WebSocket, and memory stress gate.

License

MIT