Primate 0.34: Quality-of-life improvements

26 Oct 2025 by terrablue

Today we're announcing the availability of the Primate 0.34 preview release. This release focuses on quality-of-life improvements following our TypeScript rewrite in 0.33.

If you're new to Primate, we recommend reading the Quickstart page to get started.

Versioned backend packages

Our Go, Ruby, and Python backend modules now have versioned packages published through each language's native package infrastructure:

Backend modules now advertise a compatibility version that's verified at runtime. When we introduce breaking changes in @primate/core, we publish corresponding versions of our Go module, Ruby gem, and Python package to maintain compatibility.

`RequestBody#form` replaces `RequestBody#fields`

For improved clarity, we've renamed fields to form. Access form fields (both normal and multipart/form-data) using request.body.form(), which optionally accepts a validation schema.

Breaking change: For multipart/form-data requests with files, uploaded files are now accessed separately via request.body.files() instead of being included in form(). This aligns JavaScript usage with our WASM backends and simplifies typing—request.body.form() now returns Record<string, string>.

Shortcut pema types

Pema, our validation library with integrated ORM support, now offers a more ergonomic API similar to other validation libraries. Import the main schema function and access validation types directly:

import p from "pema";

const Book = p({
  author: p.string.length(5, 20),
  published: p.date,
});

Previously, each type required a separate import (e.g., import uint from "pema/uint").

SPA reliability improvements

Fixed an issue where reopening a browser tab would display cached JSON instead of HTML when navigating via SPA. The framework now:

Sets Cache-Control: no-store on JSON navigation responses
Automatically reloads if JSON is detected on page restore
Uses self-executing module bundles for improved reliability across browser restore scenarios

What's next

Check out our issue tracker for upcoming 0.35 features.

Fin

If you like Primate, consider joining our Discord server.