routets is a Deno.ServeHandler generator that performs filesystem-based routing.
No other stuff. That's all. I was always tired of fullstack frameworks such as Fresh or Aleph.js, because of the tightly coupled design that forces users to be on the rails. So I ended up making this stupid-simple solution, which is aimed to be:
- No magic and no blackbox
- Small size and less dependency
- No squatted pathnames like
/index,/_app, or/_404 - No lock-in to a specific JSX implementation
- No lock-in to a specific architecture; MPA or SPA, SSR or CSR, etc.
- Use of Web standard APIs
So, routets is deliberately less-featured. It just provides a basic building block for writing web servers in Deno, leveraging Create Your Own™ style of experience.
Create a file with the filename being <your-route-name>.route.ts, say ./greet.route.ts here and the content is like this:
import Route from "https://deno.land/x/routets/Route.ts"
export default new Route(async () => {
return new Response("Hello, World!")
})routets comes with a built-in CLI. During development, you can use this and serve your routes immediately:
$ deno install -gAf https://deno.land/x/routets/routets.ts
$ routets # or `routets somewhere` to serve `somewhere/greet.route.ts` at `/greet`
Listening on http://0.0.0.0:8000/
Routes:
+ /greetAnd you'll see “Hello, World!” at http://localhost:8000/greet.
Alternatively, of course you can create your own script:
import Router from "https://deno.land/x/routets/Router.ts"
await Deno.serve(new Router({ root: ".", watch: true, write: "serve.gen.ts" })).finishedroutets supports dynamic routes by URL Pattern API. Please refer to the MDN documentation for the syntax and examples.
Captured parts of the pathname will be available in the first parameter of the handler. For example, when you have :dynamic.route.ts with the content being:
import Route from "https://deno.land/x/routets/Route.ts"
export default new Route(async ({ captured }) => {
return new Response(JSON.stringify(captured), { headers: { "Content-Type": "application/json" } })
})Accessing /route will show you {"dynamic":"route"}.
Once you have started using dynamic routes, you may notice it is unclear which route will be matched when multiple routes are valid for the requested pathname. For example, if you have files named .route.ts and *.route.ts, which one will be matched when you access /?
By default, routets doesn't do anything smart, and just performs codepoint-wise reverse-lexicographic ordering of pathname patterns (not of actual file paths, which include the suffix and the extension). So, in the above example, *.route.ts will win, as /* precedes / reverse-lexicographically. If you want to change this behavior, just named-export a number as precedence from each route:
// in `.route.ts`
export const precedence = 1If precedence is not exported, it implies 0.
Routes with greater precedences win. Think of it like z-index in CSS. So, at this time .route.ts will be matched first. You can always confirm the ordering by seeing the output of routets (routes listed earlier win):
$ routets
Listening on http://0.0.0.0:8000/
Routes:
+ /
+ /*If a route returns nothing (namely undefined), then it fallthroughs to the next matching route.
If you want to insert middlewares before/after an execution of handlers, you can extend the Route class as usual in TypeScript.
To exercise this, here we add support for returning a React element from handlers!
import Route from "https://deno.land/x/routets/Route.ts"
import { renderToReadableStream } from "https://esm.sh/[email protected]/server"
import { type ReactElement, Suspense } from "https://esm.sh/[email protected]"
class RouteReact extends Route {
constructor(handler: Route.Handler<ReactElement<unknown>>) {
super(async context => {
const response = await handler(context)
return new Response(
await renderToReadableStream(
<html>
<body>
<Suspense fallback={<p>Loading...</p>}>{response}</Suspense>
</body>
</html>,
),
{ headers: { "Content-Type": "text/html" } },
)
})
}
}
export default RouteReactAnd don't forget to add following options to your deno.json:
{
"compilerOptions": {
"jsx": "react-jsx",
"jsxImportSource": "https://esm.sh/[email protected]"
}
}That's it! You can now create a route using it, e.g. with the filename being .route.tsx:
import RouteReact from "./RouteReact.ts"
import { delay } from "https://jsr.io/@std/async/1.0.9/delay.ts"
let done = false
const Component = () => {
if (!done) {
throw delay(3000).then(() => (done = true))
} else {
done = false
return <b>Hello, World!</b>
}
}
export default new RouteReact(async () => {
return <Component />
})In a browser, accessing http://localhost:8000 will show you “Loading…” for 3 seconds, and then “Hello, World!”.
Changing the route filename suffix (route by default) is possible by --suffix when using the CLI and by suffix option when using the Router constructor. Although, there are some restrictions on the shape of suffixes:
- Cannot be empty
- Cannot contain slashes
- Cannot start or end with dots
These are by design and will never be lifted. routets is made with the principle of least surprise; suffixes are technically required as Deno doesn't recognize a file named .ts to be a TypeScript module, while you must be freely able to use any route file name for your own purpose, including the empty string.
Notably, use of suffix allows you to place related modules like *.test.ts aside of routes.
Basically, routets uses non-statically-analyzeable dynamic imports to discover routes. This works well locally, but can be a problem if you want to get it to work with environments that don't support non-statically-analyzeable dynamic imports, such as Deno Deploy.
For this use case, by default the routets CLI generates a server module serve.gen.ts that does only statically-analyzeable dynamic import of routes. This module can directly be used as the entrypoint for Deno Deploy. You can disable this behavior by --no-write option.
There exists a similar package fsrouter which has quite the same UX overall, but slightly different in:
- Suffix namespacing.
routetsuses namespaced filenames e.g.greet.route.ts, whilefsrouteris justgreet.ts. - Dynamic routing syntax.
routetsuses URL Pattern API e.g.:id.route.ts, whilefsrouteruses the bracket syntax e.g.[id].ts. Also,routetsdoesn't support typed dynamic routes. - JavaScript file extensions.
routetsdoesn't allowjsorjsx, whilefsrouterdoes.