htmx VS turbo

Hi there! I want to show off a little feature I made using hanami, htmx and a little bit of redis + sidekiq.

Recently, I just rewrite one of my application Stashbin from Next.js to GO. Though my main motivation of this migration was to learn GO and experimenting with HTMX. I also aiming to reduce the resource usage of my application and simplify the deployment process. Initially, Stashbin codebase are split into two seperate repository, one for the frontend that uses Next.js and another for the backend that already uses GO. The backend repository is just a REST API responsible for storing and retreiving data from the database.

HTMX is another library that gained popularity due to its server-first approach to rendering data, although seeking a much simpler way of appealing to developers.

When I work with HTMX I need isolated component that can be reusable a form. So I create a PHP Function that generate the Input Datalist.

I was inspired by htmz (which was in turn inspired by htmx) and how the author got pretty close to a basic htmx-like experience just using an iframe. I wanted to push it a little further so whipped this demo together. My submission demonstrates progressive enhancement for the form - with js enabled the request targets an iframe that is inserted into the dom, meaning the page doesn't actually navigate (similar to event.preventDefault()). The iframe receives the html response from the request and on load triggers a function to swap out it's contents into the main page.

As described on htmx.org: "htmx gives you access to AJAX, CSS Transitions, WebSockets and Server Sent Events directly in HTML, using attributes, so you can build modern user interfaces with the simplicity and power of hypertext"

Apart from the source code itself, the repo's README also gives a bit more details about the various packages I used.

1. htmx: https://htmx.org/

Also, there’s some response header juggling you have to do when submitting forms that have a validation step before redirecting: https://github.com/bigskysoftware/htmx/issues/369

I’ve tried to iron out any footguns or server requirements I’ve bumped into while using HTMX & Hotwire in my projects.

✨ In recent months, I have been developing web projects using GOTTHA stack: Go + Templ + Tailwind CSS + htmx + Alpine.js. As soon as I'm ready to talk about all the subtleties and pitfalls, I'll post it on my social networks.

I also recommend checking out the docs for Stimulus and Turbo to familiarise yourself with all their features and the APIs used in this series.

https://github.com/hotwired/turbo

Turbo 8 remove typescript without using JSDOC

Experiment using Turbo to drive front-end behavior: "Turbo 7.2.0 (currently in beta) allows you to define your own Stream actions which can be any JS code you want. By combining a custom Stream action or two with web components, you can essentially drive reactive frontend behavior from the backend stupidly easily. Loooove it! 😍 […] For a turnkey example, you could check out https://github.com/hopsoft/turbo_ready " —Jared White on The Spicy Web Discord

This handles disconnection (as could be done by any destructive change to the DOM, like navigating with Turbo or htmx, I'm not even talking about using the element in a JavaScript-heavy web app) but not reconnection though, and we've exited early from the connectedCallback to avoid initializing the element twice, so this change actually broke our component in these situations where it's moved around, or stashed and then reinserted. To fix that, we need to always call addSparkles in connectedCallback, so move all the rest into an if, that's actually as simple as that… except that when the user prefers reduced motion, sparkles are never removed, so they keep piling in each time the element is connected again. One way to handle that, without introducing our housekeeping of individual timers, is to just remove all sparkles on disconnection. Either that or conditionally add them in connectedCallback if either we're initializing the element (including attaching the shadow DOM) or the user doesn't prefer reduced motion. The difference between both approaches is in whether we want the small animation when the sparkles appear (and appearing at new random locations). I went with the latter.

If you think you have seen enough Rails magic, you are mistaken my friend. Rails have a new trick up its sleeve: Hotwire. And with the magical Turbo tool that comes with it, you can create modern, interactive web applications with minimal, or sometimes no JavaScript at all, providing users with an incredibly smooth experience.

There is also Turbo and the frameworks who adopt them, Ruby on Rails, PHP Symphony and possibly others that solves the same issue in the same manner as HTMX. And the choice for HTMX is only a personal taste in this, but you should definitely learn about this, this is as cool as HTMX!

Most controversially, the Turbo framework dropped TypeScript support altogether after assessing that strong typing was the culprit behind poor developer experience.

Turbo[0] has been solving this for years. Quite the contrary, front-end frameworks have started to think "sending JSON is good, but actually sending HTML could be great!".

DHH's presentation[1] during Rails World 2023 is quite interesting in that regard, I recommend you give it a go (start around minute 16). I am actually very excited with his vision of the web.

[0] https://turbo.hotwired.dev/