Confused about Hono
Hi everyone! I am building a Webflow app that takes data from the open Webflow designer page, connects to an external API, and spits back recommendations to the user. I have a couple of questions about logistics and which libraries to use, this being the first time I've tried to build an app like this. I am using Web Bae's monorepo for this.
I have everything working on the client side, but my understanding is that I should put the API keys and other secrets in the server side, so that they don't get exposed. Is that accurate? I started doing that, and I'm trying to figure out cf workers and hono, but it occurs to me that I don't need to use hono, right? I'm connecting to an external API, so I can just do that directly. Or should I create routes and put the code to connect to that API in those routes, for an extra layer of security?
Trying to set up the environment variables with cf workers just took me about 45 minutes, and I'm not even sure it's working because I haven't built the app yet. I just want to make sure I'm going down the right path and not over-complicating things if I don't actually need to use cf workers for this. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated! I can share my work as well.
8 Replies
Hey @You'reAWizard - You don’t technically need Hono for this. You could just use the CF Worker to forward its request to the API like you mentioned and then return the result.
Basically the CF Worker acts as a place to store your API secret and then forward the request to the API. In that sense, it functions a bit of a middleware of sorts.
We need to use it because Webflow doesn’t give us access to a server side environment that is obscured from the client side
I hope that makes sense! I really need to do some content on server side stuff with Cloudflare workers, you’re not the first person to ask about stuff like this
It's given me the opportunity to read all the docs! Originally we didn't have a membership model, but now we do, so we will be serving internal routes as well. That aside, what would you think of using Hono for the caching?
I’ve used KV for a simple cache but I don’t really have enough users to need caching. Check out the TTL property for making KV items automatically expire and delete.
Which API are you working with?
Do you think your app will need caching?
I'm working with this API here: https://apyhub.com/utility/sharpapi-generate-seo-tags, that should also tell you what the app is. We're working on a freemium app, so we won't need caching right away, I'm also not sure if we need it at all with this API at least. As usual with these projects, I'm so close to getting it to work in this new way, there's just one little thing holding me back. Do you ever offer short consultations on this stuff?
Yea I give monthly 1:1 to Patreon subscribers who request it
Happy to offer advice if it can help!
Thank you, I assume that's for the paid tier?
@You'reAWizard yea but happy to hop on a call for a few if it helps. Or you can just send me the question and I’ll give you my thoughts async
Monthly membership is only $20 which is a lot less than my hourly consulting fee 😉
That's very kind! I am considering it, the fee isn't too high, but I want to make sure my question is a good one, and I'm not just being lazy 😅