FeathersJS Fall Update
FeathersJS fall update
Hello friends!
This is the newsletter to wrap up the year of 2021. Things are on the move ðïļ and here is what has been going on over the past few months ðŠķ
Feathers v5
The latest current prerelease is v5.0.0-pre.15 (I ran into some publishing hiccups so there were a few version-only bumps). We got some great contributions and made some good progress in online pairing sessions.
For a full list of changes see the Changelog.
Feathers Schema
The biggest feature addition is the first version of @feathersjs/schema which is available as a prerelease and can be tested out. There will still be some improvements from feedback and things that haven't been addressed yet but I found it quite powerful and intuitive to use especially combined with the TypeScript integration. You can read the initial documentation at dove.docs.feathersjs.com and find the implementation details and a short example in the pull request #2441.
Hooks updates
Pairing up with Marshall, we also made a new release for @feathersjs/hooks as version 0.7.0 which introduces a wrapper for regular before, after and error hooks. After some feedback we decided to continue supporting both ways of using hooks going forward by using the collect utility function. In Feathers apps this will also continue to be available through the backwards compatible service.hook wrapper.
Deno first
@feathersjs/hook is also the first module written and published using Deno first (see pull request #93). Deno is a runtime for TypeScript and JavaScript that is secure by default and does not require a package manager. Using an npm module build tool we can now publish for all platforms in the best format (including native ES modules) and make use of Denos standard library, built in tooling and performance. In the case of @feathersjs/hooks CI runtime has been reduced from over a minute to 8 seconds. We are currently investigating if this setup will also work for Feathers core modules while maintaining Node specific packages as they currently are. Even though it is still new-ish, developing with Deno has been quite pleasant and I believe it has the potential to become a truly open platform for serverless computing. Expect to hear more about this in the near future ð
A new look
I'm happy to introduce you all to our new feathers friends! We are currently working on some rebranding for our site. Working with Jasmine King's beautiful illustrations, Feathers is getting a new face. I always enjoyed the bird theme so having some bird-characters that guide new users through their Feathers journey was something I've been wanting to do for a while.
We also set up a new shop at shop.feathersjs.com where you can order Feathers swag with the new designs. In the future it will also offer digital downloads for more in-depth Feathers content and advanced plugins.
Ecosystem
Back in June at one of the demo days with my friends at Fission I showed a prototype of using IPFS (a global decentralized file system) to deploy a Feathers app onto your own server. You can watch the video here. There is some really interesting developments in the space from low level protocols like IPFS becoming more mature to companies like Cloudflare adopting decentralized web technologies while slowly becoming a serious alternative to the big cloud providers.
On to 2022
Things have been going well since I started feathers.cloud as a Feathers focussed business in June this year. Well enough in fact, that I am finally able to commit several months of full time work to Feathers and new services around it in the new year. Part of that plan is to make the v5 release official in late February 2022. You will also be hearing from me more frequently ð
As always, thank you for supporting Feathers, stay healthy, stay safe and enjoy the end of year holidays!
David