Deno the Node replacement ? Bonus: I created a boilerplate for Deno 🦕

See also

• https://dev.to/lampewebdev/deno-the-node-replacement-bonus-i-created-a-boilerplate-for-deno-2g25

• http://fediverse.org/lampewebdev

• https://github.com/lampewebdev/deno-boilerplate

First things first

Deno is right now not production-ready. As of writing this post, it is in version 1.0.0-rc2. Does this mean we should ignore it? No, we should start to learn it right now because it will maybe take 1 or 2 years but if nothing tragic will happen then it will replace Node or at least will be as popular as Node.

I’m not bashing Node here. I love Node and I think it helped so many people but at times it can also be slow to evolve.

Like adding module support and adopting ECMAScript(javascript) standards.

Also, NPM can be a mess but to be fair dependency management, in general, is not easy.

Also tooling around node can be hard to setup. Like webpack or eslint/prettier.

I’m always using some kind of boilerplate that does not work anymore because of so many updates. Okay, enough about Node/Npm.

Creating our boilerplate

See also

• https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=axetroy.vscode-deno

First step: install deno

Now you should have the deno command at your fingertips.

In general, I would advise you to use a Unix-like OS. If you are using Windows then you can use WSL.

Also, you should have git installed and make.

You can clone the boilerplate code like this:

git clone https://github.com/lampewebdev/deno-boilerplate

For this tutorial, I will use VS code and you should download the Deno VS Code Extension

makefile

The next file we should have a look at is the makefile.

run:
	deno run --config tsconfig.json index.ts
test:
	deno test
format:
	deno fmt
debug:
	deno run -A --inspect-brk index.ts
bundle:
	rm -rf build/
	mkdir build
	deno bundle index.ts build/index

You can see the following commands in the makefile:

make run: executes the index.ts
make test: runs the tests
make format: formats all your files
make debug: runs the debugger starting in the index.ts
make bundle: bundles your project into a single file in build/index

For all these commands we don’t need any extra tools or dependencies.

It’s all built-in Deno. I find this great and it makes your life as a developer so much easier .

On thing I wish was in Deno by default would be a –watch flag that reruns your code once a file has changed.

deps.ts

Another interesting file is the deps.ts file. This is just a normal Typescript file but by convention, this file is where you organize your external modules/packages you are using.

import * as Log from "https://deno.land/std/log/mod.ts";

export {
  Log,
};

Think about it like your package.json. It is a central place where you store your dependencies.

One thing that will be interesting to see where development dependencies should go. I have seen people doing dev-deps.ts. I would prefer deps.<ENV>.ts. So for example deps.prod.ts, deps.dev.ts and so on.

configs.ts

The configs.ts for now is empty . I like dotenv files but we will see what wins in Deno.

index.ts

Then we have the index.ts . It is our entry point and as a web developer I like index but I would also have no problem to rename it.

import main from "./src/main.ts";
main();

The rest is pretty standard stuff.

src/main.ts

We have a main.ts where we can start to implement things and an example of how to implement the simplest logger in Deno.

import { log } from "./log.ts";

const main = () => {
  log.info("Starting your Deno App");
};

export default main;

What I want to add are tests and documentation. Both are built-in Deno and you need no extra tools.

If you want to help just contact me or create an issue or pull request in the GitHub Repo

README