9/29/2016 Why I like Hapi more than Express

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Why I like Hapi more

than Express
21 OCTOBER 2015

When I rst started with Node.js, my rst HTTP servers were

built using Express. Almost all the tutorials use Express as their
server, which I think helps its dominance.

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But Hapi beats it hands down. Hapi, out of the box has:

1. Easier setup with better defaults

2. Better error handling

3. More powerful reply interface

4. Better testability

And that's just scratching the surface.

Let's dive in to some code (GitHub). All of my work involves

JSON API's so that will be my focus.

Note: I'm using ES6 and HTTPie because it's my blog and I can do
what I want.

Hapi
const Hapi = require('hapi')

const port = process.env.PORT || 8080

const server = new Hapi.Server()

server.connection({ port: port })

server.route({
method: 'POST',
path: '/hello',
handler: (req, reply) => {
reply({ hello: req.payload.name })
}
})

server.start( (err) => {

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console.log('Server running at:', server.info.uri,

err ? err : '');
})

Express
const express = require('express')
const bodyParser = require('body-parser')

const port = process.env.PORT || 8080

const app = express()

app.use(bodyParser.urlencoded({ extended: true }))

app.use(bodyParser.json())

const router = express.Router()

router.post('/hello', (req, res) => {

res.json({ hello: req.body.name })
})

app.use(router)

app.listen(port)

Easier Setup
These are pretty similar. But already I see things I don't like in
Express. It requires an additional dependency to parse out my
JSON body, which is annoying. What else would I be POSTing? A
form? That also requires the body-parser dependency!

Hapi, on the other hand, parses both out of the box just ne.

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Express's middleware mentality has caused me to have over ten

middleware plugins for my app (example). I don't really want
to deal with middleware for serving a favicon.

Better Error Handling

Let's start our Hapi Server:

$ npm start

> [email protected] start

/Users/ethan/Documents/ethanmick/hapi-vs-express/hapi
> node --es_staging index.js

Server running at: http://Ethan-Micks-MacBook-

Pro.local:8080

Awesome.

Let's start another one! (In a new shell):

$ npm start

> [email protected] start

/Users/ethan/Documents/ethanmick/hapi-vs-express/hapi
> node --es_staging index.js

Server running at: http://Ethan-Micks-MacBook-

Pro.local:8080 { [Error: listen EADDRINUSE 0.0.0.0:8080]
code: 'EADDRINUSE',
errno: 'EADDRINUSE',
syscall: 'listen',

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address: '0.0.0.0',
port: 8080 }

How kind! It uses the err object in the callback to inform me of

an issue with starting the server.

Express?

$ npm start

> [email protected] start

/Users/ethan/Documents/ethanmick/hapi-vs-express/express
> node --es_staging index.js

events.js:141
throw er; // Unhandled 'error' event
^

Error: listen EADDRINUSE :::8080

at Object.exports._errnoException (util.js:837:11)
at exports._exceptionWithHostPort (util.js:860:20)
at Server._listen2 (net.js:1231:14)
at listen (net.js:1267:10)
at Server.listen (net.js:1363:5)
at EventEmitter.listen
(/Users/ethan/Documents/ethanmick/hapi-vs-
express/express/node_modules/express/lib/application.js:
617:24)
at Object.<anonymous>
(/Users/ethan/Documents/ethanmick/hapi-vs-
express/express/index.js:23:5)
at Module._compile (module.js:434:26)

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9/29/2016 Why I like Hapi more than Express

at Object.Module._extensions..js (module.js:452:10)
at Module.load (module.js:355:32)

No such kindness. It throws an exception. Express's listen

method is just a simple passthrough to the HTTP's listen
method, which doesn't pass in an error in the callback. To x
this, we need to change the code to:

app.listen(port, () => {
console.log('Server running at:', port)
}).on('error', err => { console.log('Err!', err) } )

Alright, ne, slightly di erent syntax. Whatever. Let's re o

404 request to Express:

$ http 'http://localhost:8080/random'
HTTP/1.1 404 Not Found
Connection: keep-alive
Content-Length: 19
Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8
Date: Tue, 20 Oct 2015 20:35:41 GMT
X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff
X-Powered-By: Express

Cannot GET /random

Woh! What!? I want a JSON API not a "return anything you

want" API! Express, by default, returns a lovely text/html
response on a 404. Ugh.

Hapi?

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9/29/2016 Why I like Hapi more than Express

$ http 'http://localhost:8080/random'
HTTP/1.1 404 Not Found
Connection: keep-alive
Date: Tue, 20 Oct 2015 20:35:29 GMT
Transfer-Encoding: chunked
cache-control: no-cache
content-encoding: gzip
content-type: application/json; charset=utf-8
vary: accept-encoding

{
"error": "Not Found",
"statusCode": 404
}

Oh, thank you. (Hapi uses Boom for its HTTP errors, which is
an excellent package).

Moving on, let's look at the startup options. In Express, you can
set some options when you create the server:

const app = express({

dotfiles: 'ignore',
redirect: false
})

Same with Hapi. But what happens if I mistype some?

const app = express({

dotfile: 'ignore',
redirect: 'ok'
})
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$ npm start

> [email protected] start

/Users/ethan/Documents/ethanmick/hapi-vs-express/express
> node --es_staging index.js

Server running at: 8080

Not a peep.

Let's try this in Hapi. Our server now looks like:

const server = new Hapi.Server({

connections: {
router: {
isCaseSensitive: false
}
},
debug: {
log: ['error']
}
})

Okay, let's make some honest mistakes:

const server = new Hapi.Server({

connections: {
routers: {
isCaseSensitive: 'yes'
}

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},
debug: {
log: 'error'
}
})

$ npm start

> [email protected] start

/Users/ethan/Documents/ethanmick/hapi-vs-express/hapi
> node --es_staging index.js

/Users/ethan/Documents/ethanmick/hapi-vs-
express/hapi/node_modules/hapi/node_modules/hoek/lib/ind
ex.js:731
throw new Error(msgs.join(' ') || 'Unknown error');
^

Error: Invalid server options {

"connections": {
"routers" [1]: {
"isCaseSensitive": "yes"
}
},
"debug": {
"log": "error"
}
}

[1] "routers" is not allowed

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Wow! You got really angry. But I love it! It even shows you
where the issue was, marked by the [1]. As you x each issue in
your con guration, the error message catches each one:

[1] "log" must be an array

[1] "isCaseSensitive" must be a boolean

This stops you from easily passing in an Object with many

extraneous keys (such as a large generic con guration object),
but it will always, always catch you mistyping a key, or setting
an invalid value.

Again, behind the scenes, they are using their own powerful Joi
module, which you should de nitely take a look at.

Replying
Express favors a response object that has many methods on it,
such as .json or .sendFile . Hapi does two things here. One,
their reply interface is rst and foremost a function.

reply({hello: 'Everyone!'})

Objects and Arrays are returned as JSON, strings are returned as

plain text. Just what I would expect. But Hapi goes further, and
you can return a whole bunch of clever things:

1. null

2. unde ned

3. string

4. number

5. boolean
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6. Bu er object

7. Error object (Formatted to a 500 unless it's a Boom error)

8. Stream object

9. Promise object

10. any other object or array

Nice! You can return a Stream and it'll stream the data back to
the user. You can also return a Promise, and when ful lled, it
will send the result to the user. It makes for some beautiful and
elegant code.

The Reply interface can be enhanced with some Plugins (This is

annoying, they used to be built into Hapi), and you can serve
les and directories, or Proxy requests.

Proxying is especially powerful. You can rede ne the entire URI

and Headers in your proxy method, which allows you do
awesome things, such as:

1. Hide S3 resources behind your own authentication

2. Add OAuth Authentication information to requests and pass

them to upstream services

Testing
Lastly, I want to touch on testing. Tests are extremely
important, and one thing I've found very hard is to test the
controller part of my code. I have all my logic separated into a
model layer, but I still want to ensure my controllers have code
coverage and work as expected.

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How can I do that in Express? Maybe this? Or this? I've used

Supertest in the past, but it's clunky and inelegant.

Hapi to the rescue. Change the end of our le to:

//server.start( (err) => {

// console.log('Server running at:', server.info.uri,
err ? err : '');
//})

var req = {
method: 'POST',
url: '/hello',
payload: JSON.stringify({name: 'Ethan'})
};

server.inject(req, res => {

console.log('Tested!', res.statusCode, res.result);
});

Run it and get: Tested! 200 { hello: 'Ethan' }

Hapi has a built in inject method that allows you to, well,
inject an HTTP request into the server. It gets routed like a
normal request to the correct route handler, which then
executes as normal. The result object in our test has the
information that we can validate in a test. You can see how I
fully test a server in my example hapi-starter.

Last Thoughts
There are some other things which I really like about the Hapi
Project. I like how aggressively they move forward. They just

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released version 11. They follow semantic versioning, but aren't

afraid to release a major new version with breaking changes.

They supported IO.js from the very beginning and when Node 4
came out they released Hapi 10:

hapi v10.0.0 contains no breaking changes. It is published to indicate

the transition from node v0.10 to node v4.0. Moving to v10.0.0 only
requires upgrading your node version to the latest v4. Future releases
of the hapi v10 branch will include internal changes to take
advantage of the new features available in node v4 and those will
break under node v0.10.

I love the versioning, and their unabashed movement toward a

better API. On the other side, you have Express, which released
it's latest major version on on Apr 9, 2014.

So there you have it. I've been using Hapi for over 2 years now
and always have been impressed with it. It's de nitely worth a
try for your next project!

Code
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