Zarf

Fast, Bun-powered, and Bun-only(for now) Web API framework with full Typescript support.

Quickstart

Starting with Zarf is as simple as instantiating the Zarf class, attaching route handlers and finally starting the server

import { Zarf } from "@zarfjs/zarf"

const app = new Zarf()

app.get("/hello", (ctx) => {
    return ctx.json({
        hello: "hello"
    })
})

app.get("/", (ctx) => {
    return ctx.html(`Welcome to Zarf App server`)
})

app.listen({
    port: 3000
}, (server) => {
    console.log(`Server started on ${server.port}`)
})

App and Routing

Routes are how you tell where/when/what to respond when somebody visits your app's URLs, and @zarfjs/zarf lets you easily register routes, with all the commonly used HTTP verbs like GET, POST, PUT, DELETE, etc.

Here's how you'd define your app routes -

// GET
app.get("/posts", (ctx) => {
    return ctx.json({
        posts: [/* all of the posts */]
    })
})

// POST
app.post("/posts", async(ctx) => {
    const { request } = ctx
    const body = await request?.json()
    // ... validate the post body
    // ... create a post entry
    return ctx.json(body)
})

// PUT
app.put("/posts/:id", async(ctx, params) => {
    const { request } = ctx
    const id = params.id
    const body = await request?.json()
    // ... validate the post body
    // ... upadte the post entry
    return ctx.json(body)
})

// DELETE
app.del("/posts/:id", async(ctx, params) => {
    const id = params.id
    // ... validate the del op
    // ... delete the post entry
    return ctx.json({ deleted: 1 })
})

Routing: Context

Context available as the first argument to your route handlers is a special object made available to all the route handlers which

• lets you access vaious details w.r.t Request object
• provides convenience methods like json, text, html to send Response to the client

The most accessed/useful object could be the Request object itself(available at ctx.request), but it offers few other methods too

• setHeader
• setType
• setVary
• isType
• accepts to determine things about the current request, or change few things about the response that's send to the client.

Routing: Params

Params is the second argument available to your route handlers, that lets you access the route parameters easily.

app.get("/products/:id", (ctx, params) => {
    // params.id ? //
    // Pull the details
    return ctx.json({
        product: {/* all of the posts */}
    })
})

@zarfjs/zarf supports all the common URL patterns you'd expect in a Web-App/API framework

app.get("/user/:name/books/:title", (ctx, params) => {
    const { name, title } = params
    return ctx.json({
        name,
        title
    })
})

app.get("/user/:name?", (ctx, params) => {
    return ctx.json({
        name: params.name || 'No name found'
    })
})

// /admin/feature/path/goes/here
app.get("/admin/*all", (ctx, params) => {
    return ctx.json({
        supPath: params.all // -> /feature/path/goes/here
    })
})

// /v1/nike/shop/uk
// /v1/nike/uk/shop/shop-at...
app.get("/v1/*brand/shop/*name", (ctx, params) => {
    return ctx.json({
        params // -> { brand: 'nike', ...},  { brand: 'nike/uk', ...}
    })
})

Platforms

Zarf is Bun-first, but you can run it on other platforms like Node.js and Deno too with the help of adapters. Zarf partially supports the following platforms today

• [x] Bun
• [x] NodeJS
• [x] Deno

On a platform like Deno Deploy you might not need any adapters at all. The following code just works when put in Deno Deploy or as a Supabase Edge Function.

import { serve } from "https://deno.land/[email protected]/http/server.ts";
import { Zarf } from "https://deno.land/x/[email protected]/index.ts"

const app = new Zarf()

app.get("/hello/:user", (ctx, params) => {
    return ctx.json({
        user: params.user
    })
})

app.get("/", (ctx) => {
    return ctx.html(`Welcome to Zarf Deno App server`)
})

serve(app.handle);

This is not Zarf magic, but simply the beauty and outcome of working with web standards. Adapters try to make the Framework platforms behave like they're following the standards.

RoadMap

A lot of great stuff is actually planned for the project. The Alpha version is majorly focussing on making the core stable and provide all the essential features. Here's snapshot of the roadmap.(private)

Meta

The project is developed on

• OS - MacOS Monterey
• Bun - v0.1.13