django-webpack-loader VS cash

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

Maybe a small JQuery clone like a Cash - https://github.com/fabiospampinato/cash or SurfJS https://surf.monster/ (Surf has a delay/queue, reactive templates) might help for writing less code and is still JavaScript

If stock jQuery seems too big and you have a lot of code you'd prefer not to waste time converting, try something like jQuery-slim or cash.

It was initially released in 2010. But there is a plan to create version 3.0 that will be rewritten in TypeScript and without dependency on jQuery. The plan is to use a modern Cash library to not modify the code that much.

I find that cash.js does everything I need from Jquery and it's a fraction of the size, it's great to see advancements in technology to the point that you can fit that much functionality into 6KB

Yes but it's more than just that. In relation to DOM manipulation libs like JQuery it's small and on par with something like https://github.com/fabiospampinato/cash

If you are mainly using jquery for its DOM manipulation¹ rather than for browser compatibility² or things that didn't exist consistently in older browsers³ then there are much smaller libraries that do that job which may be worth looking into. https://github.com/fabiospampinato/cash or https://github.com/franciscop/umbrella to give a couple of examples. Some explicitly support IE11 so you are not dropping as much support for legacy browsers as you might otherwise.

Though if jQuery works for you and isn't a performance issue, then by all means keep with it. It may not be ideal, but good enough and does the job. Let the naysayers spend their time debating whether you should or not, and just get on with making things!

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[1] selection engine, chained selections, chained modifications, …

[2] not the issue it once was, if you can abandon IE and old Android browsers from your supported UAs or can deal with any issues that crop up individually

[3] again, if you can afford to drop support for legacy UAs

I think it's a bit of both. jQuery served the purpose of making web development more sane back in the day by handling all browser quirks. Part of that was the nice syntax.

I personally have tried to drop jQuery, but truthfully, its syntax is just much easier to use. Nowadays, I use Cash https://github.com/fabiospampinato/cash to give me the nice syntax without the bloat. It strikes the perfect balance for me.

Taking a look at Cash so I don't have to rewrite a metric flock-ton of code. https://github.com/fabiospampinato/cash. Looking through the migration guide, I don't see any issues that affect my codebase (famous last words).

Cash's maintainer here. I don't think this is true actually.

Zepto supports some methods that Cash doesn't, but you probably shouldn't use them to begin with, like $.ajax, $.isArray, $.fn.animate etc. In 2022 either better built-in solutions exist or better specialized tiny libraries exist.

Everything that is supported by both Zepto and Cash should either work identically or Cash's implementation should be closer to jQuery's. Just to mention one thing in this regard you can run jQuery's test suite with Cash, and Cash's test suite with jQuery, easily [0]. I've done so and looked at every single failed test manually a few times, I doubt nearly the same level of attention went into Zepto. Just to mention one difference: Cash supports jQuery-style event namespacing, Zepto just doesn't support this.

[0]: https://github.com/fabiospampinato/cash/blob/272132a6dc1d885...