nitro VS webcontainer-core

Nitro is a nice https webserver that you can deploy everywhere. Comparing it to express, it doesn't need weird middlewares for json, it has a simple way to support caching, a file system router, tasks and scheduled tasks that avoid quite a few shell scripts, db:migrations etc, plugins, KV storages, SQL connectors, websockets...

Vinxi is really a kind of Meta-Router / Router Manager (built on the dev-server and bundler-toolkit Vite and the http-server Nitro). Vinxi uses various routers of your choosing as a core primitive, and allows you to compose them in a centralized config so that they work together. Be it server or client routers.

Analog allows you to deploy anywhere, literally. It uses Nitro toolkit which has options for anything while working with Vite.

For additional reading, please explore the Nitro docs at: https://nitro.unjs.io

Not to be confused with https://nitro.unjs.io the server tech behind Nuxt and SolidStart

Nuxt is powered by an internal server called Nitro. You can see its manifestation in the terminal console right after you start your local dev server:

Until it support websocket, I think it is simply a no.

https://github.com/unjs/nitro/issues/678

It's 2023 and there is a web framework that "can't" handle websocket at all. (Not even just proxying and doing nothing else.) Feels like a joke to me.

Last week, my first actual contribution into a public open source project has been merged. Its actually only a small changes into Unstorage library, which is used by Nitros server engine, which in turn used by the popular NuxtJs framework. At the time, I was stuck in one of my side project which used Nuxt because Unstorage is lacking some functionalities that I need. However because Unstorage is 2 layers deep in the dependency tree, its not trivial for me to change the code there.

How does it work? There is no backend whatsoever. The API Security Academy leverages WebContainers, a new technology that allows running full-blown node instances directly in the browser. Each WebContainer contains a live GraphQL application, so you'll not only understand why a vulnerability is risky, but also how to exploit it and, most importantly, how to fix it.

StackBlitz made the claim "... run Node.js, entirely inside your browser" #658, then had to revise it's claim to "We currently do not expose a way to use WebContainer outside of StackBlitz.com,".

> Wasm though seems like the likely general heir, and will have many different offerings for how to do that (Deno being one!).

I was recently blown away by some ideas that StackBlitz [0] apply based on WebContainers. The idea of a "server in the browser", they allow you to run Node-based environment like that via Wasm.

[0] https://stackblitz.com/

[1] https://webcontainers.io/

See https://webcontainers.io.

This very simple fact is well known flaw, which was already often criticized and asked for solutions by users. It doesn't only affect this kind of very exotic bootstrap applications but also significantly limits rusts usefulness in many other areas. Pure browser based scientific code documentation and example notebooks (e.g. jupyterLite) and sandboxed CI and IDE solutions (e.g. web containers) as available for many other languages are simply not available for rust because of this very fundamental issue.

Looks like they plan to open it. From the FAQ section of README (https://github.com/stackblitz/webcontainer-core#faqs):

> Is there a developer API?

I'm skeptical about stackblitz claims. The last time I checked that is closed source code https://github.com/stackblitz/webcontainer-core/issues/658.

StackBlitz claimed https://blog.stackblitz.com/posts/introducing-webcontainers/ to have implemented Node.js in the browser, though I have not observed any evidence of that being true and correct https://github.com/stackblitz/webcontainer-core/issues/658.

The other honorable mention is StackBlitz, a web-based web editor for making containers that run Javascript applications. Interestingly, StackBlitz is championing WebContainers, a technology that allows developers to start NodeJS servers within the browser. The downside is, this technology only works with Javascript-based projects (NodeJS, NextJS, etc). I include it here because WebContainers could easily be extended to support other languages via WASM, like Ruby. I’ll also add in Buildah, a tool for building OCI images. I won’t say much about this tool because it’s designed for building images; you still need another service, like Podman, to actually create the containers.