uNode

uNode is a high-performance Node.js web api framework built on top of uWebSockets.js with multi-threading support. It is designed to be simple, fast, and easy to use. uNode is inspired by Express.js and ASP.NET Core minimal API.

Features

• Blazing fast performance
• Multi-threading
• Simple and intuitive API
• Route groups
• Middleware
• File serving
• Streaming
• Cookies
• Request body parsing

Installation

npm i "@oki.gg/unode"

Important Note on Async Request Handling

uNode is built on top of uWebSockets.js, which has specific constraints regarding asynchronous operations within route handlers. You must not access the request object (req) after using await or returning a promise. This is due to the fact that the request object is not valid after the asynchronous operation completes.

Attempting to access the request object after an asynchronous operation will result in an error like the following:

Error: uWS.HttpRequest must not be accessed after await or route handler return. See documentation for uWS.HttpRequest and consult the user manual.

Workaround

To work around this limitation, extract all necessary information from the request object before performing any asynchronous operations. Here is an example:

.get('/', async (req, res) => {
  const someHeader = req.getHeader('someHeader')
  const body = await req.body()
  await new Promise((resolve) => setTimeout(resolve, 1000))
  res.json({ someHeader, body })
})

Documentation

Multi-threading

const app = new App({ threads: 4 }) // defaults to 1 thread if not specified

Minimalistic chainable API

new App()
  .get('/', () => 'Hello World!')
  .listen(3000)

Or a more verbose traditional way

const app = new App()

app.get('/', (req, res) => {
  res.send('Hello World!')
})

app.listen(3000, () => {
  console.log('Server is running on port 3000')
})

Request body parsing and JSON response

app.post('/', async (req, res) => {
  const body = await req.body()
  res.json(body)
})	

Route groups

const group = new Router()
  .get('', () => 'Get all')
  .post('', () => 'Created')
  .get('/:id', () => 'Get by id')
  .delete('/:id', () => 'Deleted')

app
  .group('/api', group)
  .listen(3000)

Middleware

app.use((req, res, next) => {
  console.log('Middleware')
  next()
})

Sending files

app.get('/file', (req, res) => {
  res.sendFile('path/to/file')
})

Static file serving from a directory

app.get('/*', serveStatic('path/to/directory'))

Params and query

app.get('/:id', (req, res) => {
  const id = req.params.id
  const query = req.getQueryParams()
  res.json({ id, query })
})

Cookies

app.get('/', (req, res) => {
  // Get cookie
  const cookie = req.getCookie('name')
  // Set cookie
  res.setCookie('name', 'value', {
    maxAge: 3600,
    secure: true,
    httpOnly: true,
    sameSite: 'strict'
  })
  res.send(cookie)
})

Performance Benchmark

All tests where done using Apache JMeter on a Windows 11 PC, WSL 2 ubuntu 22.04, AMD Ryzen 5 5600X 3,7GHz 6-core 12-thread CPU, 32GB RAM

100 concurrent users, 1 seconds ramp-up period, 60 seconds test duration.

"Hello world" plain text response.

Result

160091.185 requests/second (multi-threaded, 4 threads)
77227.514 requests/second (single-threaded)

Comparison with other relevant frameworks

uNode (multi-threaded, 4 threads) (uWebSockets.js)

160091.185 requests/second

Go net/http

131820.081 requests/second

ASP.NET Core minimal API

123631.414 requests/second

uWebSockets.js

78089.792 requests/second

uNode (single-threaded) (uWebSockets.js)

77227.514 requests/second

hyper-express (uWebSockets.js)

65598.721 requests/second

Bun (Buns http server is also built on uWebSockets.js)

64097.835 requests/second

ElysiaJS

63300.917 requests/second

Node.js standard http library

32322.931 requests/second

Express.js

9322.392 requests/second