TS/JS go-to libs

Updated Aug 2024. For looking up trending newer alternatives, use npmtrends. For Nodejs, nodejstoolbox a precompiled list of trends by category.

Universal

Standard libs

Standard libs extend the runtime with convenience helpers, structures and patterns. Use these two in order

• FxTS functional stdlib with async pipe. Basically, async fp lodash, tree shakable, iterator-based with lazy eval.
• es-toolkit stdlib; direct lodash successor
• attempt for retry logic

Others too fill some missing utilities:

• streaming-iterables async iterator tools (overlaps with FxTS) until we get https://github.com/tc39/proposal-async-iterator-helpers
• modern-async functional stdlib with synchronization patterns: Queue, Scheduler, Delayer, Deferred, timeout + async array methods with concurrency and cancelling.
• radashi functional stdlib with some async tools
• just dep-free standalone stdlib tools

Mixed

• async-mutex mutexes
• attempt promise retry
• dayjs datetime
• deepmerge-ts modern deep merge
• error-serializer cross-engine error serialization (alt for node <18.18: serialize-error)
• immer immutable updates without clone (see use-immer for use in react)
• js-sdsl performant data structures
• kysely typesafe SQL query builder with auto migrations and an ORM layer; supports most JS envs and most DBs (alt: drizzle-orm)
• magic-regexp compiled declarative string matching
• memoize-one last-invocation memoization (more complex and powerful alternative: memoizee)
• micromatch glob matching (MATCHING ONLY) (alt: minimatch)
• typed-emitter 0kb strict typings for node:events. Alternative if a full implementation is needed: mitt
• natural-orderby orderBy with natsort built-in. update use .sort((a, b) => a.localeCompare(b, undefined, { numeric: true, sensitivity: 'base' }))
• redlock distributed redis locks
• superjson (de-)serialization with advanced types (alt: avsc)
• tinybench universal benchmark
• transliteration utf8>ascii
• ts-pattern pattern matching for cleaner, typesafe and exhaustive conditions
• ts-results rust-like Result and Option patterns
• uuid uuids (dict conversion for uuids: short-uuid; hashing alternative: hashids)
• workerpool Parallel execution using node:worker_thread or WebWorker (alternative: piscina node only but well used)
• wretch better fetch
• xstate state machines — come with an optional graphical editor
• zod type-safe validation

System runtimes

• bull redis-backed distributed jobs and messages
• clack CLI Prompts
• exit-hook cleanup on exit (bonus: http-terminator to kill http connections)
• pino logging (alternatives: tslog (more modern) or debug (og))
• supertest node HTTP Testing
• tmp-promise temp files and folders with auto cleanup
• yargs argv parser (alternatives: oclif high-level framework)

React

• ahooks hook lib (alternative: react-use)
• suspend-react async-await for components
• use-immer immer-backed swap-in for useState and useReducer
• jotai global state managers (alternatives: zustand, signia)

Testing

• cypress browser automated testing
• vitest vite test framework

CLIs

• chokidar-cli fast cross-platform cli utility to watch file system changes (alternative: watchexec)
• concurrently run commands concurrently
• dotenv-vault sync encrypted dotenv files (alternative: doppler.com)
• env-cmd setting environment variables from a file
• tsx esbuild-enhanced node replacement.

SaaS

• Payments: Lemon Squeezy, Stripe, Paddle

Recipes

Reducing time complexity

• Use data structures from js-sdsl;
  • For optimizing search complexity, OrderedSet and OrderedMap can provide boosts to intersection/difference operations even when identity-sorted on an alphanumeric ID.
  • For optimizing mutability, Stack, Queue, PriorityQueue, LinkList and Deque
• Use FxTS for operations on sets. All common array operations + lodash-alikes are supported

Online tools

• https://regex101.com/ regex building tool
• https://requestcatcher.com/ test incoming requests online
• https://stately.ai/ state machine creator
• https://www.speedscope.app/ universal flamegraph inspector
• https://www.drawdb.app/ db schema mockups and schema generator

Dev tools

• https://bundlejs.com/ npm package size checker with an editor to test tree-shakability
• https://github.com/sharkdp/hyperfine benchmark commands
• https://github.com/hatoo/oha http load tester
• https://github.com/acrazing/dpdm/ circular dependency detector for debugging weird import errors (used before initialization, cannot read property x of undefined that is clearly there, etc)

Selfhosted tools

• https://github.com/oauth2-proxy/oauth2-proxy authwall for internal tools
• https://github.com/Infisical/infisical secret management