Feedback + questions

[brillout]

By @bholmesdev:

Also for Hattip: really like that it’s as simple as request / response. The compose API for middleware is also excellent. Trouble I ran into: I couldn’t get traditional http-server middleware working at all. A ton of middleware depends on passing a response in using writeHead, which isn’t part of the web standard Response spec

Curious if you have suggestions here? Also, if you have suggestions for a static assets server so I don’t have to write one myself?

[brillout]

I couldn’t get traditional http-server middleware working at all

Do you mean https://www.npmjs.com/package/http-server or Node.js's http module?

A ton of middleware depends on passing a response in using writeHead, which isn’t part of the web standard Response spec

Yes, I don't think there is an (easy) way to port these to the new Request/Response standard. If you want to use these middlewares, then you'll have to use HatTip's @hattip/adapter-node.

if you have suggestions for a static assets server

IIRC @cyco130 was (considering) working on this.

[bholmesdev]

I couldn’t get traditional http-server middleware working at all

Yes, I'm referring to the http module. I was specifically wiring up the server-handler package

A ton of middleware depends on passing a response in using writeHead, which isn’t part of the web standard Response spec

Gotcha, I'm fine using the node adapter! What's the config option to toggle this?

[brillout]

What's the config option to toggle this?

The readme has an example of doing this.

I'm actually realizing that it's an interesting use case: to use HatTip to write modern Request/Response server code while using Node.js(/Express.js) middlewares. You obviously lose the "deploy to anywhere/edge" part and we should clearly communicate the trade off.

Created a ticket for adding a static middleware: #59.

[cyco130]

Hi @bholmesdev,

Thanks for the feedback.

This is how I use Node middlewares (req, res, next style) with HatTip:

// entry-node.js
import { createServer } from 'node:http';
import sirv from 'sirv';
import { createMiddleware } from '@hattip/adapter-node';
import hattipHandler from './entry-hattip.js';

const sirvMiddleware = sirv('public');
const hattipMiddleware = createMiddleware(hattipHandler);

createServer((req, res) =>
  sirvMiddleware(req, res, () => hattipMiddleware(req, res))
).listen(3000, () => {
  console.log(`Server listening on http://localhost:3000`);
});

Here's a live example.

The idea is that your HatTip app (which lives in entry-hattip.js in this example) becomes a middleware itself and then you chain it with whatever other middleware you want. Here I did the chaining manually (sirvMiddleware(req, res, () => hattipMiddleware(req, res))) to avoid adding a dependency but you can use Express, Connect, or Polka if you have more sophisticated middleware chaining needs, e.g. mounting middleware to subpaths.

On static file serving middleware, it's on the map but I didn't prioritize it because all target platforms have their on semi-automatic way to handle static files anyway. Node doesn't, but I used to use HatTip almost exclusively in combination with vavite which handles it for me. Now HatTip has its own CLI and Vite plugin which makes it even easier.

In addition to the issue @brillout has opened, we've had some discussion on how to proceed: #45. Now that we have a form data parser, cross-platform filesystem handling (where it makes sense) is the next logical step. Even on platforms that don't have a filesystem, having something backed by other storage media like memory, S3, KV stores, Redis etc might make sense. A static file server would be then more or less trivial to implement.

[bholmesdev]

Ah, super helpful example on integrating with node:http. This is honestly what I was looking for in the @hattip/adapter-node documentation but only saw the express example 👍

[cyco130]

Took your word and updated the readme.