Vike, the flexible framework for building advanced web applications, has introduced Photon, a next-generation infrastructure for deploying JavaScript servers across any platform. Photon represents a shift in how developers approach server deployment and integration.
The Vike team has also released vike-photon, which replaces the previous vike-server package. Developers currently using vike-server are encouraged to migrate to the new infrastructure to take advantage of the improved capabilities.
Photon is designed to work with any JavaScript server framework, including Hono, Express.js, Fastify, Elysia, H3, Srvx, and Hattip, and supports deployment to any platform, whether self-hosted, Cloudflare, Vercel, or Netlify. This universal approach addresses a longstanding challenge in the JavaScript ecosystem where different server frameworks and deployment platforms have required custom integration work.
One of the improvements in Photon is the Cloudflare integration. When using @photonjs/cloudflare, the development environment runs inside Cloudflare’s workerd runtime instead of Node.js. This is the same runtime Cloudflare uses in production, making the development environment a much more faithful representation of production behavior. Vike is among the first frameworks to support this capability, powered by Vite’s Environment API, which enables Vite to run in a Node.js process while executing server code in another non-Node.js process such as workerd.
The new infrastructure also allows developers to directly use Cloudflare’s APIs in development without requiring the previously clunky getPlatformProxy() setup. Developers can now access key-value stores, environment variables, and other Cloudflare features seamlessly in both development and production environments.
Beyond the Cloudflare improvements, Photon includes several developer experience enhancements. Hot Module Replacement (HMR) eliminates the need for full server reloads during development. The infrastructure supports per-route code splitting, allowing deployment to separate edge workers. Photon also provides zero-config integration for most common scenarios while maintaining flexibility for advanced use cases, and includes a built-in server for projects that prefer not to configure their own.
The Vike team positions Photon as part of a broader movement toward shared deployment infrastructure in the JavaScript ecosystem. Other projects working in this space include Nitro and Netlify’s infrastructure RFC. The Vike team has expressed eagerness to collaborate with both initiatives, noting that increased collaboration across the ecosystem benefits everyone.
The announcement has generated positive early feedback from the developer community. Responding to the release announcement, one developer commented, “Just finished the article, this sounds amazing.”
For developers migrating from vike-server, the process involves updating dependencies to remove vike-server and install vike-photon along with the latest version of Vike (0.4.239 or higher). Configuration files require updates to replace vike-server/config with vike-photon/config, and server entry points need adjustments to use the new Photon packages such as @photonjs/hono or @photonjs/vercel. Developers using vike-cloudflare should replace it with @photonjs/cloudflare, while those using vite-plugin-vercel should switch to @photonjs/vercel. Complete migration documentation is available at vike.dev/migration/vike-photon.
Photon is open source and developed collaboratively, reflecting the team’s philosophy that deployment infrastructure should be shared across the JavaScript community. While the long-term evolution of these tools remains uncertain, Photon provides a concrete solution for developers today while the community works toward potentially integrating more functionality directly into Vite and its ecosystem.
