hotwire-rails VS stimulus_reflex

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).

Then there are stack-specific libraries: StimulusReflex for Rails, Phoenix LiveView, Laravel Livewire, Unicorn and Tetra for Django, Blazor for .NET, … and the list goes on.

Morphing and the concept to do refreshes after broadcast are hardly new. Stimulus Reflex has employed morphing to update the page for years, and CableReady::Updatable, which allows listening to model requests for refreshes, has also been around for a while. But I am excited to see these concepts being adopted in Turbo and becoming more mainstream.

Stimulus Reflex (Ruby), which predates Hotwire, also deserves a mention, though most of its momentum seemed to stall when Hotwire was announced.

https://docs.stimulusreflex.com/

Hi there, not crazy experienced on the topic but after some research i made for personal reasons i found https://mayu.live/ whick looks interesting (and as mentioned already https://docs.stimulusreflex.com/, seems to be close to Liveview)

StimulusReflex Docs pretty easy to use and release 3.5.0 is coming soon.

However, the timing may be a little off. In some ways, it feels like the "Express" way of developing for the backend is dying. We are seeing tools that blur the line between backend and frontend, trying to unify how we develop web applications. Tools like Phoenix LiveView, StimulusReflex, Laravel Livewire, Remix, Next.js, and many others are being developed.

You can also learn Rails and StimulusReflex

Reading the article and the source code, I learned a ton of stuff, as always. In his implementation, Louis is using StimulusReflex (built on top of Stimulus) to achieve this. I was curious about several points:

Now that we know that our backend is working as it should, let’s wire up our stuff. I’m gonna skip on Stimulus Reflex setup and configuration and dive right in. You can easily follow the official setup or, if you use import-maps, follow @julianrubisch’s article on the topic. I also know that leastbad has been working on an automatic installer that detects your configuration and sets everything up for you if you care to try it before the next version of SR gets released.