---
title: 'AppExpress Essentials'
excerpt: 'Expanding Appwrite Functions with React views, web compression & more.'
date: 2024-05-23
categories: appwrite, open-source, web
featureImage: '/images/appexpress.webp'

prev:
  text: 'Moving to VitePress'
  link: '/blog/moving-to-vitepress'

next:
  text: 'Undici Issues on Appwrite'
  link: '/blog/undici-issues-on-appwrite'
---

I developed [**AppExpress**](https://github.com/itznotabug/appexpress) to enhance navigation within Appwrite
Functions, inspired by the `express.js` framework. The initial reception was positive, demonstrating a clear need for a
straightforward yet powerful solution. This led to my pursuit of enhancing its extensibility, including the ability to
integrate custom view engines and middleware.

These enhancements were not directly requested by the community but stemmed from my view to simplify the framework,
making it effortless to incorporate middleware or view engines. In a related development,
[**Matej Bačo**](https://github.com/Meldiron), **Appwrite's Function Engineer**, showed an interest in a `JSX` view
engine especially since `Hono` supports it natively.

---

In response to these developments, I am excited to introduce
[**AppExpress Essentials**](https://github.com/itznotabug/appexpress).
This repository marks a crucial step toward creating an ecosystem for Functions, featuring integrations specific
to `AppExpress` such as middleware, view engines, and web compression.

The repository currently includes:

1. `React` View Engine 🎉
2. `ZSTD` Web Compression
3. Middleware for handling `favicon`, `cookie removal`, and `content minification`

As needs and use cases evolve, I plan to extend and enhance this suite of features. This is just the beginning!

---

Repository - [**https://github.com/itznotabug/appexpress-essentials**](https://github.com/itznotabug/appexpress-essentials)