H4

H4 is a lightweight and delightful http framework written in Dart.

Motivation

Dart is a powerful and rich language. I’m exploring the possibility of using dart as my go-to scripting language.

Philosophy

I love the design philosophy of h3.

A small core with a plethora of composable utility functions built in.

Composable utilities have huge advantages compared to traditional plugin/middleware approaches:

• ✅Your server only includes and runs the code that is needed
• ✅ You can extend your server functionality easily without adding global plugins
• ✅ The usage is explicit and clean with less global middleware and plugins

H4 is built for composability and ease of use, as we’ll see in the later parts of this document.

Tutorial

Enough yapping, let’s build something!

dart --version

Scaffold a dart app

dart create app -t console-simple

Then install H4

dart pub add h4

Running the app

Everytime you make changes make sure to run (or re-run) the dart file containing your main function.

dart run app.dart

Hello World.

import 'package:h4/create.dart';

void main() {
  var app = createApp();
  var router = createRouter();

  app.use(router);

  router.get("/", (event) => "Hello world!");
}

Brava!

Hello world!🎉

Let’s fetch some data!!