polka VS Express

Express.js, with its long-lived version 4 is famous for its somewhat low performance. Other projects like fastify or polka have benchmarks outperforming Express.js. I don’t know why Express is slower, maybe because of regex processing of routes? If you’re using parametric routes like /users/:userid/entity and have no regexp routes, then replacing Express.js with fastify or polka will add a performance boost to your app. They are not direct replacements, but you can convert code if you really need that boost. In the article below benchmarks shows huge improvement, but in reality, your code will be a limiting factor to your app performance, and you are unlikely notice any improvement.

- once released and popular, they cease getting frequent updates

Now, yes this is a generalization. It doesn't apply to all of their packages, and not at the same point in time. But there is a pattern there. Some quick diving into the author's Github account, and their more popular repos shows the pattern. It's also clear that this was a choice made by a Svelte contributor to use their own package for "official" support in Svelte Kit.

When it comes to polka itself, I just don't get why a maturing framework like Svelte would choose something whose only real advantage lies in micro-benchmarking porn [1]. Speculation aside, I'm surprised the Svelte team didn't look at that choice through a lens of higher scrutiny. Koa would have been an infinitely better choice in my personal opinion, and there are several community-driven setups [2][3] for it.

[1] https://github.com/lukeed/polka#benchmarks

[2] https://github.com/kaladivo/svelte-kit-koa-boilerplate

[3] https://blog.logrocket.com/sapper-svelte-tutorial-2021/

Check out polka if you haven’t. It’s far leaner, and faster.

polka link

Sapper, by default, uses polka as the server. I decided to use express instead.

Learn something new every day. This is awesome I could probably use polka instead of express.

Express: A lightweight framework for building web applications.

Now, we will create API using expressjs. When we created application using --ssr flag, the Angular CLI already took care of installing expressjs for us.

First, we import express. The Express framework allows us to create routes that will respond to webhook POST requests and serve an HTML file when a GET request is made to the root of the site.

Basic Knowledge of Express

Express.js Documentation

In the JavaScript ecosystem, there are guides for enabling SAML-based enterprise single sign-on in AdonisJS, Express.js, Next.js, Remix, and React with an Express.js backend.

Starting off strong with Express.js, the cool kid on the block for building web apps. It's lightweight, flexible, and doesn't throw a tantrum when you ask it to scale. With Express, you can handle HTTP requests like a pro, play around with middleware, set up routes without breaking a sweat, and render views that make your app look stunning. Big names like Netflix and Uber are already on board, and if it's good enough for them, it's definitely worth a peek.

express - one of the most popular middleware tools, lightweight and easy to learn. docs

Now we can install both Express and Socket.io libraries: