Requests & Responses

In Nova, data flows through your application via the Request object and is sent back to the client using the Response utility.

The Request Object

The req object is passed to every middleware and route handler. It contains all the necessary data about the incoming HTTP call.

Property	Type	Description
`path`	`string`	The requested URL path (e.g., `/users/123`).
`method`	`string`	The HTTP method (e.g., `GET`, `POST`).
`headers`	`table`	Key-value pairs of request headers.
`query`	`table`	Key-value pairs of URL query parameters.
`params`	`table`	Captured values from dynamic segments like `[id]`.
`body`	`any`	The raw or parsed request body.

The Response Utility

While you can return a raw table, it is highly recommended to use Nova.response to ensure your headers and status codes are set correctly.

local Nova = require("@path/to/nova")

-- Usage
Nova.response(body, options)

JSON Responses (Default)

By default, Nova assumes you are building an API. Any table passed as a body will be automatically encoded to JSON.

function Route.Get(req)
    return Nova.response({ success = true }, { status = 200 })
end

HTML Responses

Nova can also serve server-side rendered strings. Set the isHtml flag to true to update the Content-Type header automatically.

function Route.Get(req)
    local html = "<html><body><h1>Hello from Nova</h1></body></html>"
    return Nova.response(html, { isHtml = true })
end

Status Codes

You can pass any valid HTTP status code in the options table. Common examples:

200 : OK (Default)

201 : Created

400 : Bad Request

401 : Unauthorized

404 : Not Found

500 : Internal Server Error

Detailed Errors in Development

Nova's error handler is environment-aware. If you set your environment variable LUNE_ENV=dev, Nova will return the full Luau stack trace in the response body when a 500 error occurs, making it much easier to debug crashes in your handlers or middleware.