Cav

Cav is a solo developer’s web framework, made for Deno. Guiding principles:

• Modular, maintainable server definitions
• No-fuss data serialization
• Automatic end-to-end typesafety
• Isomorphic client
• Use The Platform

Status: WIP, active, almost tested, and definitely not ready for production.

Goals

• Learn as much as possible about backend web frameworks, by writing one from scratch Deno
  • Zero third-party dependencies
• It should come with everything a modern web server might need, without relying on third-party services (minus the database)
  • Routing
  • Static asset serving
  • Signed cookies and JWTs
  • Web sockets
  • Form and JSON parsing / validation
  • De/serialization of most data types, including Files, Dates, Maps, etc.
  • Dev-time bundling for TypeScript assets
  • Works with frontend frameworks like Preact
• “Hello world” should be as easy as deno running a tiny main.ts
  • Zero config
  • Zero CLI commands
• The client should use types imported from the server to catch API mistakes at the IDE level automatically
  • End-to-end typesafety
  • Compatible with Zod data parsers
• Most tasks should be typesafe without needing to write TypeScript
  • Uses inferencing and generics behind-the-scenes
  • Maximal TypeScript benefits, minimal TypeScript
• Its syntax should be functional and declarative
  • Immutable, schema-like Router and Endpoint definitions
  • No hidden context
  • No middleware
  • No magic Yes magic 🧙‍♂️
• Production deployments should be a simple git-commit-push
  • Deno Deploy without a build step

Non-goals

• React-first
• Built-in SSR and hydration
• SSG
• Strict file/folder structure
• File-system based routing
• Make everyone happy
• Money

Inspirations

• Zod / tRPC
• Express / Koa / Oak
• superjson / devalue / json-dry

Dedication

Cav is dedicated to the bar it’s named after. 🍻