applin-ios VS nicegui

> Beyond Python and React ... Implementing frontends for other platforms like mobile ...

Shameless plug: I built a mobile version of this: https://www.applin.dev

I built a thing that makes it much simpler to make apps: https://www.applin.dev

You make a web server that returns JSON defining your UI. Then you make a native iOS app by copy/pasting the provided Main.swift file and adding the URL of your server. The app uses an iOS client library, fetches the JSON page definition, and builds/updates the page with native widgets. I'm planning to eventually build Android, web, and desktop clients.

Hi HN, I'm a backend engineer who made an app and didn’t like the tools. Then I made the thing I needed: a mobile app toolkit for backend engineers. I'm calling it Applin™. :)

https://www.applin.dev/

How it works: You make an HTTP server that returns JSON objects that define page content. Then you make a mobile app that calls the server and renders the pages using native widgets. Applin is the server and client libraries that make this easy.

Server libraries: Currently there's Rails https://rubygems.org/gems/applin-rails and https://github.com/leonhard-llc/applin-rails-demo . Which languages shall I add next?

Client libraries: Currently there's iOS https://github.com/leonhard-llc/applin-ios . Which platform shall I add next?

They say, if you're not embarrassed by the quality, then you're launching too late. Applin is usable and not yet pretty and not yet comprehensive. I need customer feedback on priority and requirements.

To try it out right away, use https://apps.apple.com/us/app/applin-tester/id6464230000 and tap the rails-demo link.

The hardest part of this project was making the client update the page without losing keyboard focus and scrolling to the top. To do that, the code must pick the correct existing widgets for each new version of the widget tree. The current (working) version performs five passes over the widget tree: first picking focused widgets and their ancestors, then focus-able widgets, then other stateful widgets, then widgets with matching attributes (label, URL, etc.), and finally former siblings of the correct type. Then it creates any new widgets. Now that it has widgets for the new tree, the code updates the widget tree without removing any sub-widget that will be added again. This prevents losing keyboard focus and prevents resetting scroll positions. Here's the code:

https://github.com/leonhard-llc/applin-ios/blob/main/Sources/ApplinIos/page/widget_cache.swift

Please try out Applin, use it at your company (buy a license), and let me know what features to build first! Post a comment here, add a GitHub issue, or email me at [email protected] .

To get updates, join https://groups.google.com/g/applin-announce .

Thanks for reading! :) --Michael

I was looking at this space and nicegui seemed like the best ootb experience.

https://nicegui.io/

Dash is similar in spirit, as a "build web UIs with Python" framework. Dash seems more similar to nicegui (https://nicegui.io) architecturally than to Hyperdiv. Like nicegui, it builds a static dom that is then mutated via callbacks or data bindings.

By contrast, Hyperdiv lays out UI declaratively based on state, and when state changes, the app re-runs, generating an updated UI. Streamlit and Hyperdiv seem to work similarly, though I'm not sure how Streamlit handles state and state-based layout.

For native GUI, DearPyGui[0] as modern as you can.

For browser web-based GUI, you can use nicegui[1]

[0] -- https://github.com/hoffstadt/DearPyGui

[1] -- https://github.com/zauberzeug/nicegui

I want to bring to attention a set of frameworks that make webdevelopment using Python simple and fun. The popular opinion maybe that webpages developed with Python maybe slow. But this is not the case. Do checkout https://github.com/ofjustpy/ofjustpy/, https://github.com/zauberzeug/nicegui/ and https://github.com/justpy-org/justpy . All these frameworks are build on top of Starlette and make web development really easy. If you want simple and ready to use the nicegui is the choice. If you want fast, scalable, and more control then give ofjustpy a try.

Yes, NiceGUI aims for a very gentle learning curve. Coming from Streamlit I suspect your main adaptation will be that in NiceGUI you need to write valid Python code. Streamlit constantly reevaluates your script which feels nice and easy but creates lots of problems down the road. See https://github.com/zauberzeug/nicegui/discussions/21.

Auth is a big limitation. It's not a built-in component, they have [an example](https://github.com/zauberzeug/nicegui/blob/main/examples/aut...) using the FastAPI layer for auth, but I haven't had time the time to try implementing it. It's definitely not something you get out of the box with NiceGUI.

For scaling, I am viewing it mostly as an internal tool builder. I wouldn't recommend it for external applications. So as far as scaling an internal app I think it works fine. [Their website](https://nicegui.io) is built with NiceGUI, and it works fine, but you can feel the lag occasionally on some of their larger demo pages.

Well, I was at PyCon Ireland last weekend and I missed the NiceGUI talk. I hear postive things about it and anything shiney and anything frontend-related always catches my attention (although I admit talking to a friend when I missed this talk was just as fun, and it was worth it).