datasette.io VS hotwire-rails

Opened an issue exploring alternatives here: https://github.com/simonw/datasette.io/issues/109

I decided to just drop "any size" but keep "any shape".

Here's an example from one of my projects: https://github.com/simonw/datasette.io/blob/main/.github/workflows/deploy.yml

I've come around to almost the opposite approach.

I pull all of the data I can get my hands on (from Twitter, GitHub, Swarm, Apple Health, Pocket, Apple Photos and more) into SQLite database tables that match the schema of the system that they are imported from.

For my own personal Dogsheep (https://simonwillison.net/2020/Nov/14/personal-data-warehous...) that's 119 tables right now.

Then I use SQL queries against those tables to extract and combine data in ways that are useful to me.

If the schema of the systems I am importing from changes, I can update my queries to compensate for the change.

This protects me from having to solve for a standard schema up front - I take whatever those systems give me. But it lets me combine and search across all of the data from disparate systems essentially at runtime.

I even have a search engine for this, which is populated by SQL queries against the different source tables. You can see an example of how that works at https://github.com/simonw/datasette.io/blob/main/templates/d... - which powers the search interface at https://datasette.io/-/beta

I've been exploring this technique more over the past year and I really like it - https://datasette.io (code at https://github.com/simonw/datasette.io ) is a more recent and much more complicated example.

Extracting links from markdown and using them to populate some additional columns or tables at build time would be pretty straight forward.

I run SQLite in serverless environments (Cloud Run, Vercel, Heroku) for dozens of projects... but the trick is that they all treat the database as a read-only asset.

If I want to deploy updated data, I build a brand new image and deploy the application bundled with the data. I tend to run the deploys for these (including the database build) in GitHub Actions workflows.

This works really well, but only for applications that don't need to apply constant updates more than a few times an hour! If you have a constant stream of updates I still think you're better off using a hosted database like Heroku PostgreSQL or Google Cloud SQL.

One example of a site I deploy like that is https://datasette.io/ - it's built and deployed by this GitHub Actions workflow here: https://github.com/simonw/datasette.io/blob/main/.github/wor...

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/

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).