It's 2023 and still no native async support for routes?

[olalonde]

Is this project still maintained? Last release was about a year ago and still no support for async routes. Does it really take 6 years to implement that 4 lines of code change? Sorry but this is frustrating...

[dougwilson]

Hello, I'm sorry you feel that way. Yes, it is maintained, and you can find experimental native support for async routes in Express 5 beta. which is due to be finalized in about a month as the last pieces are merged together. If you are looking for something in particular to be released, the best way to make that happen is to help contribute to the project, or even ask how you can help. Coming out of the gate with frustrations and demands only serves to demoralize the folks who are working on the project for zero compensation.

[markcellus]

Yup and the beta version has been pretty stable btw. The async routes have been awesome so far. Thanks a lot for your hard work! ❤️

[dougwilson]

Great to hear @markcellus ! The only thing "beta" about 5 is really just the API (for semver reasons) -- every release is intended to work well or we'll fix ASAP. Look forward to one last Express 5 pre-release in the next 14-ish days (most likely RC-level) with the final bound for about a month out, just so folks can check out that last pre-release. I am very excited! There has been so many ups-and-downs, including multiple project ownership changes over the Express 5 timeline, which really did it no favors. I doubt any future major version will be so hampered like this was.

[olalonde]

FWIW it's not really "out of the gate". I recall being part of many discussions about this over the years (e.g. #2259 (comment)), hence the frustration. Also, I was under the impression that Express development was now supported by a company and/or funded.

Glad to know the new version is coming soon. By the way, I'd be more than happy to help with development if you can guide me on where to start helping.

[dougwilson]

Express development was now supported by a company and/or funded

Unfortunately this is very much not the case. There were several attempts to make this happen over the years, but they have all fallen through. All of the back-and-forth around that really hindered development in the end, and so the Express.js project is no longer attempting to pursue that in order to get back to actually development instead of chasing partnerships :)

[markcellus]

I'm guessing you both are talking about the OpenJS page that shows them "hosting" Express.js? If that's not the case, they should remove Express.js from that page.

I realize this is off-topic, though, so I'll shut up. But OpenJS seems like nothing but a bunch of corporate CEOs trying to own, control and take credit for the hard work of maintainers by dangling money in front of them. So I'm glad to hear that Express.js maintainers are not interested in that stuff. We open-source maintainers already have a hard time competing with these close-source, privacy-invasive apps (which are really just big data collectors) built by these corporations. We don't need these same corporations making the situation worse.

[olalonde]

Would you be open to porting Expressjs to TypeScript or adding a transpilation step? It would allow modernizing the code base while retaining support for older Node.js versions. E.g. using ...args instead of arguments . Using const instead of var. etc. I would like to work on a PR if you are open to the idea.

[dougwilson]

Hi @olalonde thanks for the suggestion! I'm not familiar with TypeScript and don't have interest in using it, either. I believe the other members have expressed the same. Coverting the code base from JavaScript to TypeScript would essentially fork the code, as everyone who works on it would disband (like myself) and probably just work on the JavaScript version of Express. So, to summarize I don't think it would be worth the change, as it would effectively leave Express unmaintained at that point.

[kkirby]

I understand your concerns about forking the codebase and potentially leaving Express unmaintained if the team were to switch to TypeScript. However, I would like to point out some of the benefits that TypeScript can bring to your project.

Firstly, TypeScript is designed to be closely aligned with ECMAScript. This means that it supports all the latest features of JavaScript, and in fact, often adds features to JavaScript before they are officially adopted by ECMAScript.

Furthermore, TypeScript's type system is designed to be compatible with the latest ECMAScript standards. This ensures that your TypeScript code will be compatible with new standards as they are adopted.

TypeScript also provides a number of other benefits over plain JavaScript, such as static type checking, enhanced tooling support, and better code organization. By adopting TypeScript, you can catch errors earlier in the development process and write more reliable code.

I would argue that it's premature to dismiss TypeScript without giving it a fair chance. While it may require some initial investment in terms of learning and refactoring, the long-term benefits can outweigh the costs. Additionally, TypeScript is designed to be a superset of JavaScript, so you can start using it gradually and migrate your code incrementally.

Just my 2¢