#523 — March 5, 2024
Deno Introduces JSR: A New JavaScript Registry — The JavaScript Registry (a.k.a. JSR) is a new TypeScript-first, ESM-only module registry designed for the entire JavaScript ecosystem (not just Deno). This post digs into what it’s all about. I find it rather cute that npm’s own flexibility makes JSR easy to use from Node too, via npx jsr!
Dahl, Casonato, and Whinnery
Express.js 4.18.3: A Small Step for a Framework.. — .. but a giant leap for Express-kind? 😅 The first new release of Express.js in over sixteen months has no significant new features (hence the patch level bump) but it’s a great sign given the recent renewed focus on pushing Express forward.
Express.js Team
Instant GraphQL Backends for Node.js — Whether you’re a GraphQL enthusiast, a Node.js developer, or someone striving for optimal API performance, this guide will equip you enough to accelerate your API creation journey and focus on meaningful backend work.
Hasura sponsor
IN BRIEF:
The OpenJS Foundation has launched a new effort to iterate on the standardization of package.json and improving the interoperability of package metadata.
Zoltan Kochan of the pnpm project proposes 🐦 a rather drastic (but humorous) solution to the package manager/corepack situation in Node.. 😅
The Bytecode Alliance has announced Jco 1.0, a native JavaScript WebAssembly toolchain and runtime for natively running WASM components within Node.
A Look at Eight Top Recent V8 in Node Updates — V8 is the JavaScript engine that powers Node and the V8 team continues to make it faster and better every month without fail. This post explains some of the most recent enhancements at a high-ish level.
Antonello Zanini
Building a better-sqlite3-Compatible JavaScript Package with.. Rust? — better-sqlite3 is a commonly used SQLite library for Node.js and the folks at Turso wanted to create something compatible with it but that uses their libSQL SQLite fork under the hood instead.
Pekka Enberg (Turso)
Tuple ‘Makes Pair Programming with Co-Workers and Friends Fun Again’ — Try Tuple for free and find out why staff engineers at Figma can’t stop talking about Tuple.
Tuple sponsor
▶ Drizzle ORM Explained in 100 Seconds — The latest bitesize video from the always educational Fireship channel covers Drizzle ORM, a fast, TypeScript-based way to work with a variety of database systems across numerous JavaScript platforms, from Node to Bun, Deno Deploy, Supabase Functions, Cloudflare Workers, and more. If you need more, there’s ▶️ a 13 minute ‘crash course’ to learning Drizzle, too.
Fireship
Choosing the Right Node.js Package Manager in 2024: A Comparative Guide
NodeSource
🛠 Code & Tools
PGlite: Postgres in WebAssembly — Folks have run Postgres in WebAssembly contexts before, though usually with a heavy Linux VM layer sitting in the middle. PGlite packages a WASM build of Postgres into a TypeScript library that can be run in the browser or on Node.js at under 4MB gzipped.
ElectricSQL / Neon
🎨 yoctocolors 2.0: The Smallest, Fastest Command-Line Coloring Package — It’s Chalk’s ‘baby cousin’ and comes from one-man Node package powerhouse, Sindre Sorhus. Being small and fast comes as no surprise when there’s so little code.
Sindre Sorhus
📰 Classifieds
👨💻Try Pythagora, a VS Code extension that builds apps from scratch with AI by talking to you. It writes the code, and you write instructions.
🪝Hookdeck: A managed reliability & observability layer for webhooks & async messaging. Receive, transform, route, & deliver events at scale.
ExpressoTS: A TypeScript + Express.js Framework — A layer that sits on top of Express.js and provides typed structure around concepts like controllers, models/providers, and more. GitHub repo.
Richard Zampieri
MongoDB Node.js Driver 6.4 – The latest official MongoDB Node.js driver. (The MongoDB team does a good job with release notes – hats off to them.)
Bun 1.0.30 – The alternative runtime lands more Node.js compatibility enhancements.
esno 4.7 – Imagine tsx but with automated CJS/ESM mode and caching.
express-rate-limit 7.2 – Basic rate-limiting middleware.
AdminJS 7.7 – Automatic admin interface for Node apps.
NVM Desktop 3.2 – Desktop UI for Node Version Manager.
node-addon-api 8.0 – A module for using Node-API from C++.
Piscina 4.4 – Efficient worker thread pool implementation.
Archiver 7.0 – A streaming interface for archive generation.
Undici 6.7 – Node’s HTTP/1.1 client library.