Alpine.js VS Mithril.js

Alpine.js for reactive frontend

✨ 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.

> But honestly, torn towards htmx but undecided.

We are in the middle of migrating from our monster react application into server rendered pages (with jinja2). The velocity at which we are able to ship and the reduction of complexity has been great so far.

Managing client side state for simple things like (is the dropdown open/closed), listening to keyboard events and such can be done with something like alpine-js [1] without all the baggage that something like react brings.

It appears this is already the trend with JS frameworks too - with server side rendering being the new norm.

[1] https://alpinejs.dev/

Sure, you can use any number of JS-avoidance libraries. I'm a fan of Turbo, and there's also htmx, Unpoly, Alpine, hyperscript, swup, barba.js, and probably others.

Direct DOM, but with a library. Specifically AlpineJS since it follows Vue closely in design practices allowing me to scale into a full web application if necessary (basically swapping to Vue takes minimal work). The Morph plugin is specifically what I like using.

If you want more details on the initial setup I encourage you to take a look at the Part I that covers more of the initial implementation. For this portion, I added Prisma as an ORM, a frontend style library called Tachyons, and AlpineJS to handle any client-side interactions. I did this to avoid needing to add a client-side bundler to the build and instead just rely on plain old module imports to compose the frontend. This is now the default for Rails and it is quite nice to not need any additional build tools for the client.

- [swallow-pywebview](https://github.com/rangwea/swallow-pywebview)： Base on [pywebview](https://pywebview.flowrl.com/) using Python，the frontend base on [alpinejs](https://alpinejs.dev/) and [tailwindcss](https://tailwindcss.com/)。

If you’ve followed our other tutorials, you might be familiar with Alpine.js. It’s a lightweight JavaScript library that allows you to add interactivity to your site without writing a single line of JavaScript. It’s incredibly easy to use, and we’ll show you how to make the animation trigger when the user scrolls to it.

The approach is not new, essentially a variation of Knockout, Alpine, and similar "JS-in-HTML" approaches.

I don’t enjoy React much, but (as I’ve commented before) I do love Mithril (https://mithril.js.org). Immediate-mode UI via a vDOM, like React, but small, simple, and with none of the reactivity complications. I’d never go back to building apps with pure JS.

You can find more information about Mithril.js on its official website.

The idea of nested function calls to build HTML is not new. Back in the hey-day of JS frameworks, this was a common vdom pattern. I kinda miss [MithrilJS](https://mithril.js.org/#dom-elements)

I have mixed feelings about React. I like it better than jQuery, and better than other JS frameworks I’ve used.

But I much prefer Mithril (https://mithril.js.org/), which offers the same immediate-mode advantages (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19746235) but without the crazy complex dependency-tracking reactivity.

I rather liked this comment on React: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38640051

Vue with Vite (the builder/runner) is a stable, open source option. It is really a lightweight start where you're mostly writing HTML with interpolated data, and Vue is updating values correctly and performantly. Just build your reactive HTML app in one file and break into separate components as you're feeling the spirit. https://vuejs.org/guide/quick-start

Mithril if you just want to drop in want a tiny, complete reactive library that doesn't require a build step--this one is most like what you might end up creating in a large jQuery app. You can understand everything from the homepage. https://mithril.js.org/

HTMX if you really like HTML conventions. This doesn't feel jQuery-like and depends on your approach to your server app. https://htmx.org/

React is still has gratuitous complexity. If you need some React like, take a look at mithril which is simpler and much smaller.

The submitter creating multiple var -> let PRs (one PR per file), was also doing this in other projects, and would've broken some of their users.

https://github.com/MithrilJS/mithril.js/pull/2880#pullreques...

And he created multiple PRs there too. And didn't follow their workflow...