Hono: het ultrasnelle webframework gebouwd op Web Standards

Jarenlang betekende het kiezen van een JavaScript-webframework een afweging accepteren: Express was universeel maar traag en aan Node gebonden, Fastify was snel maar alleen Node, Next.js was volledig maar zwaar. Toen edge-runtimes — Cloudflare Workers, Deno Deploy, Bun, Vercel Edge — verschenen, toonden die frameworks hun grenzen.

Hono (Japans voor "vlam" 🔥) is het moderne antwoord. Een framework van minder dan 14KB, volledig gebouwd op Web Standards (Request, Response, fetch), dat draait waar er een JavaScript-runtime is. Dezelfde code wordt zonder wijziging gedeployed naar Cloudflare Workers, Bun, Deno, Node.js, Vercel, Netlify en AWS Lambda.

Waarom Hono

1. Performance. RegExpRouter compileert alle routepatronen in één regex. Benchmarks halen meer dan 400.000 ops/s.
2. Portabiliteit. Web Standards betekent nul Node-afhankelijkheden. Dezelfde app.fetch wordt als default geëxporteerd in een Cloudflare Worker, doorgegeven aan Bun.serve, gemount in een Deno-server of geadapteerd met @hono/node-server.
3. TypeScript-first DX. Pad-parameters afgeleid als literal types, end-to-end type-safe RPC-client.

Beginnen

npm create hono@latest my-api
cd my-api
npm install
npm run dev

De starter vraagt welke template: cloudflare-workers, bun, deno, nodejs, vercel, aws-lambda, nextjs en meer.

// src/index.ts
import { Hono } from 'hono'

const app = new Hono()

app.get('/', (c) => c.text('Hello Hono!'))

export default app

Op Cloudflare Workers is dit genoeg. Op Bun: Bun.serve({ fetch: app.fetch, port: 3000 }). Op Node: serve({ fetch: app.fetch }) uit @hono/node-server.

Routing

import { Hono } from 'hono'

const app = new Hono()

app.get('/', (c) => c.text('Home'))
app.get('/posts/:id', (c) => {
  const id = c.req.param('id')
  return c.json({ id })
})
app.get('/posts/:id/comments/:commentId', (c) => {
  const { id, commentId } = c.req.param()
  return c.json({ id, commentId })
})
app.get('/files/*', (c) => c.text('Wildcard'))
app.post('/posts', async (c) => {
  const body = await c.req.json()
  return c.json({ created: body }, 201)
})

Routes groeperen

// routes/posts.ts
import { Hono } from 'hono'

const posts = new Hono()
posts.get('/', (c) => c.json({ posts: [] }))
posts.get('/:id', (c) => c.json({ id: c.req.param('id') }))
export default posts

// src/index.ts
import { Hono } from 'hono'
import posts from './routes/posts'

const app = new Hono()
app.route('/posts', posts)

Het Context-object

app.post('/echo', async (c) => {
  const userAgent = c.req.header('User-Agent')
  const page = c.req.query('page')
  const body = await c.req.json()
  const env = c.env

  c.set('requestId', crypto.randomUUID())
  const id = c.get('requestId')

  c.header('X-Request-Id', id)
  c.status(200)
  return c.json({ userAgent, page, body, id })
})

Middleware: het ui-model

import { Hono } from 'hono'
import { logger } from 'hono/logger'
import { cors } from 'hono/cors'
import { secureHeaders } from 'hono/secure-headers'

const app = new Hono()

app.use('*', logger())
app.use('*', secureHeaders())
app.use('/api/*', cors({ origin: 'https://spinny.dev' }))

app.use('*', async (c, next) => {
  const start = performance.now()
  await next()
  c.header('X-Response-Time', `${performance.now() - start}ms`)
})

Ingebouwde middleware

Type-safe custom middleware

import { createMiddleware } from 'hono/factory'

type AuthVars = { userId: string; role: 'user' | 'admin' }

export const requireAuth = createMiddleware<{ Variables: AuthVars }>(
  async (c, next) => {
    const token = c.req.header('Authorization')?.replace('Bearer ', '')
    if (!token) return c.json({ error: 'Unauthorized' }, 401)

    const payload = await verifyJwt(token)
    c.set('userId', payload.sub)
    c.set('role', payload.role)
    await next()
  }
)

app.get('/me', requireAuth, (c) => {
  const userId = c.var.userId
  return c.json({ userId })
})

Validatie met Zod

import { Hono } from 'hono'
import { zValidator } from '@hono/zod-validator'
import { z } from 'zod'

const createPost = z.object({
  title: z.string().min(1).max(200),
  body: z.string().min(1),
  tags: z.array(z.string()).default([]),
})

app.post(
  '/posts',
  zValidator('json', createPost),
  (c) => {
    const data = c.req.valid('json')
    return c.json({ ok: true, post: data }, 201)
  }
)

RPC: end-to-end type-safe client

// server.ts
import { Hono } from 'hono'
import { zValidator } from '@hono/zod-validator'
import { z } from 'zod'

const app = new Hono()
  .get('/posts/:id', (c) =>
    c.json({ id: c.req.param('id'), title: 'Hello' })
  )
  .post(
    '/posts',
    zValidator('json', z.object({ title: z.string(), body: z.string() })),
    (c) => c.json({ ok: true }, 201)
  )

export type AppType = typeof app
export default app

// client.ts
import { hc } from 'hono/client'
import type { AppType } from './server'

const client = hc<AppType>('https://api.spinny.dev')

const res = await client.posts[':id'].$get({ param: { id: '42' } })
if (res.ok) {
  const data = await res.json()
  console.log(data.title)
}

const created = await client.posts.$post({
  json: { title: 'Hallo', body: 'Hono is een vlam' },
})

Statuscodediscriminatie

.get('/posts/:id', (c) => {
  const post = findPost(c.req.param('id'))
  if (!post) return c.json({ error: 'not found' }, 404)
  return c.json({ post }, 200)
})

const res = await client.posts[':id'].$get({ param: { id } })
if (res.status === 404) {
  const { error } = await res.json()
}
if (res.status === 200) {
  const { post } = await res.json()
}

Routers en performance

import { Hono } from 'hono'
import { LinearRouter } from 'hono/router/linear-router'

const app = new Hono({ router: new LinearRouter() })

Multi-runtime deploy

Cloudflare Workers

import { Hono } from 'hono'

type Bindings = { MY_KV: KVNamespace; DB: D1Database }
const app = new Hono<{ Bindings: Bindings }>()

app.get('/cache/:key', async (c) => {
  const value = await c.env.MY_KV.get(c.req.param('key'))
  return c.json({ value })
})

export default app

Deploy: npx wrangler deploy.

Bun

import { Hono } from 'hono'
const app = new Hono()
app.get('/', (c) => c.text('Bun + Hono'))

Bun.serve({ fetch: app.fetch, port: 3000 })

Node.js

import { serve } from '@hono/node-server'
import { Hono } from 'hono'

const app = new Hono()
app.get('/', (c) => c.text('Node + Hono'))

serve({ fetch: app.fetch, port: 3000 })

Deno

import { Hono } from 'jsr:@hono/hono'
const app = new Hono()
app.get('/', (c) => c.text('Deno + Hono'))
Deno.serve(app.fetch)

Vercel

// api/[[...route]].ts
import { Hono } from 'hono'
import { handle } from 'hono/vercel'

const app = new Hono().basePath('/api')
app.get('/hello', (c) => c.json({ msg: 'Hello from Vercel' }))

export const GET = handle(app)
export const POST = handle(app)

Praktijkvoorbeeld: REST API met auth en DB

import { Hono } from 'hono'
import { jwt } from 'hono/jwt'
import { logger } from 'hono/logger'
import { cors } from 'hono/cors'
import { zValidator } from '@hono/zod-validator'
import { z } from 'zod'

type Bindings = { DB: D1Database; JWT_SECRET: string }
type Variables = { jwtPayload: { sub: string } }

const app = new Hono<{ Bindings: Bindings; Variables: Variables }>()

app.use('*', logger())
app.use('/api/*', cors({ origin: 'https://spinny.dev', credentials: true }))

const auth = (c: any, next: any) =>
  jwt({ secret: c.env.JWT_SECRET })(c, next)

const api = app.basePath('/api')

api.get('/posts', async (c) => {
  const { results } = await c.env.DB
    .prepare('SELECT id, title, created_at FROM posts ORDER BY created_at DESC LIMIT 50')
    .all()
  return c.json({ posts: results })
})

api.post(
  '/posts',
  auth,
  zValidator('json', z.object({
    title: z.string().min(1).max(200),
    body: z.string().min(1),
  })),
  async (c) => {
    const { title, body } = c.req.valid('json')
    const userId = c.var.jwtPayload.sub
    const result = await c.env.DB
      .prepare('INSERT INTO posts (title, body, author_id) VALUES (?, ?, ?) RETURNING id')
      .bind(title, body, userId)
      .first<{ id: number }>()
    return c.json({ id: result?.id }, 201)
  }
)

api.onError((err, c) => {
  console.error(err)
  return c.json({ error: 'Internal error' }, 500)
})

export type AppType = typeof api
export default app

Testen

import { describe, it, expect } from 'vitest'
import app from '../src/index'

describe('GET /api/posts', () => {
  it('geeft de lijst met posts terug', async () => {
    const res = await app.request('/api/posts')
    expect(res.status).toBe(200)
    const body = await res.json()
    expect(body.posts).toBeInstanceOf(Array)
  })
})

Best practices

1. Ketting routedefinities

const app = new Hono()
  .get('/posts', handler1)
  .post('/posts', handler2)
  .get('/posts/:id', handler3)

2. Exporteer het type, niet de implementatie

De client moet AppType importeren.

3. Eén router per domein

Sub-app voor posts, users, webhooks.

4. Validatie aan de rand, altijd

Elke externe input moet door zValidator.

5. Steun op bindings, niet globale clients

Op Cloudflare KV/D1/R2 via c.env.

6. Meet voor je de router optimaliseert

De default SmartRouter past in 95% van de gevallen.

Conclusie

Hono is in 2026 de de-facto standaard geworden om edge-ready APIs te bouwen in TypeScript.

Startchecklist:

• npm create hono@latest en kies je runtime-template
• Definieer routes met chaining (.get(...).post(...))
• Voeg logger, cors, secureHeaders toe als globale middleware
• Valideer elke input met @hono/zod-validator
• Exporteer AppType en consumeer de API met type-safe hc-client
• Schrijf tests met app.request() — geen HTTP-server nodig
• Deploy met wrangler deploy (CF), vercel deploy of de bundler van je runtime