Alpine.js VS hotwire-rails

Do you specifically need a SPA (Single Page App) framework? If so then mithril is decent. If you are instead doing a MPA (Multi Page App), you could look at something like Alpine.js.

I wanted to make a custom gradient for a client, but found it very annoying to do manually, so I found the Color.js library and used that together with Alpine.js to make this little tool:

My go-to these days is AlpineJS since it's familiar enough due to being designed after Vue, no shadow DOM and no scoped styles to deal with, and lightweight. I'd probably just bundle them into components using bind. You can use modules and import an AlpineJS CDN in your AlpineJS components, which you can serve from a CDN if you wanted.

Having (real) components, sets it apart from other no-build / small runtime frameworks (like Alpine.js and Vue-Petite), because this allows for the creation of advanced full-size SPAs.

However, since bootstrap is the css of jQuery, Tailwind is the css of Alpine js, And since tailwind is an alternative for bootstrap, then alpine is said to be the alternative to jQuery.

Then I thought this is a good opportunity of being a smart ass and implement it with Alpine.js, and it was just a mess—but I found out a few things.

Mini-frameworks like AlpineJS, Vue-Petite, and Stimulus exist exactly to fill this space. But whenever I consider reaching for one of these, I usually find that the job can just as easily be done in Vanilla JS. And if it can't, it typically requires the big-framework-X anyway.

I was going by Github language stats indicating 90% HTML / 10% JS https://github.com/alpinejs/alpine

Applications generated with Rails 7 will get Turbo and Stimulus (from Hotwire) by default, instead of Turbolinks and UJS. Hotwire is a new approach that delivers fast updates to the DOM by sending HTML over the wire.

For Ajax-y stuff, I am really excited by the new crop of "HTML-as-a-Service" or "HTML-over-the-wire."

https://htmx.org/

https://hotwired.dev/

Did you build and maintain UI ? Pick the approach whits suits best.

Also note - Hotwire

Hotwire is an alternative approach to building modern web applications without using much JavaScript by sending HTML instead of JSON over the wire

https://hotwired.dev/

For all the turbo/stimulus/hotwire mix, you want to add a new feature just for the sake of adding it? or do you have a use case that fits the feature? if you have then you probably already have an implementation with a different technology (stimulus reflex? some custom websockets or ajax implementation? something with anycable?) and you have to check how to migrate from that technology to hotwire. If you just want to use the feature with no real need for it to practice then just pick any tutorial from the internet (like the intro in the official website https://hotwired.dev).

I was recently interested in similar topic. Here are 3 similar solutions I found:

* https://htmx.org/

* https://unpoly.com/

* https://hotwired.dev/

My personal preference is Unpoly (the idea of "layers" is awesome). But the best explanation of concept as a whole (HATEOAS, keeping app state on server using partial page updates, etc) is at HTMX homepage, and in these essays:

* https://htmx.org/essays/hateoas/

* https://htmx.org/essays/locality-of-behaviour/

At the end of 2020 the Basecamp team released a collection of Javascript libraries called Hotwire. Modern web stacks have popularized javascript-rendered front ends and JSON transmissions. Hotwire's primary motivation is to reduce the Javascript footprint and allow application front ends to be created in primarily HTML. It pairs very nicely with the Ruby on Rails ideology and is often demonstrated in that context. I aim to write a series on how Hotwire can be used in any application to simplify development and reduce the need for heavy Javascript downloads. Hotwire currently consists of two javascript libraries: Turbo and Stimulus. The first part of this series introduces Turbo.

I've been doing that a while until I just got sock of the JS spagetti and often duplicated code and went full on Angular CSR and never looked back. That being said, I've been seeing a lot recently about Laravel's Livewire and Symfony and Ruby on Rail's integration with Hotwire (stimulus+turbo).