Hono

Hono (Japanese for "flame" 🔥) is a small, fast web framework built on Web Standards. Works on all JS runtimes.

Core API

import { Hono } from 'hono'
const app = new Hono()

app.get('/', (c) => c.text('Hello!'))
app.post('/api', async (c) => c.json({ ok: true }, 201))

export default app

Context Core Methods

// Responses
c.text(str, status?)       // plain text
c.json(obj, status?)        // JSON
c.html(str)                 // HTML string
c.body(stream, headers?)    // raw body

// Requests
c.req.param('id')          // path params (type-inferred)
c.req.query('name')         // query params
c.req.valid('json')         // validated data (with validator)
c.req.header('x-token')     // request headers
c.req.cookie('session')     // cookies

// Variables/state
c.set('key', value)         // set variable (shared via middleware)
c.get('key')                // get variable
c.var.foo                   // access middleware-set variable

// Other
c.notFound()                // 404 (avoid in RPC)
c.redirect('/path', 302)    // redirect

Routing

// Basic routes
app.get('/users/:id', (c) => c.json({ id: c.req.param('id') }))

// Regex routes
app.get('/posts/:id{.+}', (c) => { /* matches /posts/a/b/c */ })

// Route grouping
const api = new Hono()
api.get('/posts', ...)
api.get('/users', ...)
app.route('/api', api)

// HTTP methods
app.get|post|put|patch|delete|options|head

// Multiple paths
app.get(['/home', '/'], (c) => c.text('Home'))

Project Creation

# npm
npm create hono@latest my-app -- --template cloudflare-workers --pm npm --install

# bun
bun create hono@latest my-app

# Common templates: cloudflare-workers, bun, deno, vercel, aws-lambda, nodejs

npm create arg passing: npm requires --, others optional. --template selects template, --pm specifies package manager, --install auto-installs deps.

Large Application Structure

Recommended: Use app.route() for modular apps, not RoR-style Controllers (type inference breaks).

// authors.ts - separate Hono instance per module
const app = new Hono()
  .get('/', (c) => c.json('list'))
  .post('/', (c) => c.json('create', 201))
  .get('/:id', (c) => c.json(c.req.param('id')))

export default app
export type AppType = typeof app

// index.ts - compose
import authors from './authors'
const app = new Hono()
app.route('/authors', authors)
export default app

RPC: Chain methods to export types:

const route = app.get('/', (c) => c.json({ ok: true }))
export type AppType = typeof route  // or typeof app

Middleware

// Built-in
import { cors, logger, etag } from 'hono/middleware'
app.use('*', cors(), logger(), etag())

// Custom
app.use('*', async (c, next) => {
  c.set('requestId', crypto.randomUUID())
  await next()
})

// Path-specific
app.use('/api/*', authenticate())

// Error handling
app.onError((err, c) => {
  return c.json({ error: err.message }, 500)
})

Common built-in middleware: cors, jwt, bearer-auth, basic-auth, logger, etag, secure-headers, cache, compress, body-limit, pretty-json, timing, request-id, ip-restriction

Validators

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

app.post('/posts',
  zValidator('json', z.object({ title: z.string(), body: z.string() })),
  (c) => {
    const { title, body } = c.req.valid('json')
    return c.json({ ok: true }, 201)
  }
)

export type AppType = typeof app  // export for client

Validation targets: json, form, query, param, header, cookie

RPC Client

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

const client = hc<AppType>('http://localhost:8787/')

// Request
const res = await client.posts.$post({
  json: { title: 'Hello', body: 'Hono!' }
})

// Response
if (res.ok) {
  const data = await res.json()
}

Don't use c.notFound() in RPC mode — use c.json(..., 404) instead, or type inference breaks.

Path params use param, queries use query, forms use form, JSON use json.

JSX

import { Hono } from 'hono'
import type { FC } from 'hono/jsx'

const app = new Hono()

const Layout: FC = (props) => (
  <html><body>{props.children}</body></html>
)

app.get('/', (c) => c.html(<Layout><h1>Hello!</h1></Layout>))

tsconfig.json needs:

{
  "compilerOptions": {
    "jsx": "react-jsx",
    "jsxImportSource": "hono/jsx"
  }
}

Helpers

Context Extensions (Variable Types)

// Define types
type Env = { Variables: { user: User } }

// Use
const app = new Hono<{ Variables: { user: User } }>()

app.use('*', async (c, next) => {
  c.set('user', { id: 1, name: 'Alice' })
  await next()
})

app.get('/me', (c) => c.json(c.var.user))

Testing

// Method 1: app.request()
const res = await app.request('/api/posts?page=1', {
  method: 'POST',
  body: JSON.stringify({ title: 'Hello' }),
  headers: { 'Content-Type': 'application/json' }
})

// Method 2: fetch style
const res = await fetch('/api/posts', {
  method: 'POST',
  body: JSON.stringify({ title: 'Hello' })
})
const data = await res.json()

Reference Docs

Detailed docs loaded on demand:

• Routing
• Middleware
• Helpers
• RPC/Client
• Context API