Integration with Node.js

Elysia provides a runtime adapter to run Elysia on multiple runtimes, including Node.js.

To run Elysia v2 on Node.js, install the v2 Node adapter. The v1 adapter is a different release line.

bun add elysia@rc @elysia/node@rc

pnpm add elysia@rc @elysia/node@rc

npm install elysia@rc @elysia/node@rc

yarn add elysia@rc @elysia/node@rc

Then apply the Node adapter to your main Elysia instance.

import { Elysia } from 'elysia'
import { node } from '@elysia/node'

const app = new Elysia({ adapter: node() })
  .get('/', () => 'Hello Elysia')
  .listen(3000)

This is all you need to run Elysia on Node.js.

Additional setup (optional)

For the best experience, we recommend installing tsx.

tsx is a CLI that transpiles TypeScript to JavaScript with hot-reload and several more features you would expect from a modern development environment.

bun add -d tsx @types/node typescript

pnpm add -D tsx @types/node typescript

npm install --save-dev tsx @types/node typescript

yarn add -D tsx @types/node typescript

Then open your package.json file, set the package to use ES modules, and add the following scripts:

{
     "type": "module",
     "scripts": {
      "dev": "tsx watch src/index.ts",
      "build": "tsc -p tsconfig.json",
      "start": "NODE_ENV=production node dist/index.js"
     }
}

These scripts refer to the different stages of developing an application:

dev - Start Elysia in development mode with auto-reload on code changes.
build - Build the application for production use.
start - Start a production Elysia server.

Make sure to create a tsconfig.json:

tsc --init

Then configure these options in tsconfig.json:

{
    "compilerOptions": {
        "target": "ES2022",
        "module": "NodeNext",
        "moduleResolution": "NodeNext",
        "lib": ["ESNext", "DOM", "DOM.Iterable"],
        "types": ["node"],
        "rootDir": "src",
        "outDir": "dist",
        "strict": true,
        "skipLibCheck": true
    },
    "include": ["src/**/*.ts"]
}

The build script reads this configuration, including strict and the output directory. Use .js extensions when importing your own modules with NodeNext. tsx watch reloads on code changes for a similar experience to bun dev.

pnpm

If your pnpm configuration does not install peer dependencies, add the peers required by Elysia v2 explicitly:

pnpm add typebox exact-mirror openapi-types