django-webpack-loader VS Alpine.js

Django Webpack Loader

Check out https://github.com/django-webpack/django-webpack-loader

About one month ago i started having a lot of doubts on my frontend. At first, instead of decoupling frontend from backend, i decided to use a library called django-webpack-loader that lets me serve webpack from Django templates, so i created a Vue app and served it from Django (i used a simple index.html view). So at this point i basically have a SPA that instead of being decoupled from Django, it's served by Django.

You can do this with Django and nothing else easily or you can use a third party library called Django-Webpack-Loader.

In addition to what's already been said (completely separate frontend & backend; or do a CDN include), I've worked in a codebase that uses django-webpack-loader.

The biggest challenge to using Django with React IMO is getting the right blend of isomorphic rendering down. I don't want to go full SPA with Django as this defeats the purpose of Django IMO. Most parts of the site I want server-rendered, while in stateful parts I want React. So, let's say I have a site with 20 different React "apps" (i.e. stateful components) that I want to distribute amongst my various Django sections (Django "Apps" within the same project). And I want to do that with one webpackconfig. How do I tell my webpack where to put all those react bundles? The answer I've found is django-webpack-loader[1], however as you can see in the Issues section, one of the biggest limitations here is the inability to chunk React (and other issues).

Does anyone have a solution they like for this kind of isomporphic Django problem?

1. https://github.com/owais/django-webpack-loader

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.