htmx VS Turbolinks

I was inspired by htmz (which was in turn inspired by htmx) and how the author got pretty close to a basic htmx-like experience just using an iframe. I wanted to push it a little further so whipped this demo together. My submission demonstrates progressive enhancement for the form - with js enabled the request targets an iframe that is inserted into the dom, meaning the page doesn't actually navigate (similar to event.preventDefault()). The iframe receives the html response from the request and on load triggers a function to swap out it's contents into the main page.

As described on htmx.org: "htmx gives you access to AJAX, CSS Transitions, WebSockets and Server Sent Events directly in HTML, using attributes, so you can build modern user interfaces with the simplicity and power of hypertext"

Apart from the source code itself, the repo's README also gives a bit more details about the various packages I used.

1. htmx: https://htmx.org/

✨ 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.

I've been digging into HTMX lately (using Python web frameworks) and find the concepts and approach to be interesting and promising. The idea of hypermedia driven systems over the current practice of JavaScript based frameworks (I never really got into React, played with Vue, and enjoy Svelte/SvelteKit) and the ability to chose your language/framework for the backend while primarily leveraging HTML/CSS on the frontend just seems refreshing.

Apparently it changed from 2-clause BSD: https://github.com/bigskysoftware/htmx/commit/e16f1865a494b6...

(The zero clause license drops the requirements for preserving the copyright notice when distributing)

It would be a sin not to start with something that prides itself on being the front-end library of peace. HTMX skyrocketed in popularity in 2023, gaining most of its GitHub stars during the past year. HTMX is not your average JS framework. If you work in HTMX, you will spend most of your time in the world of hypermedia, looking at web development from a completely different pair of eyes as compared to our usual JS-heavy outlook on modern web development. HTMX leverages the power of the concept of HATEOAS (Hypermedia as the Engine of Application State), enabling developers to access browser features directly from HTML, instead of using Javascript.

htmx - high power tools for html

// app/javascript/src/helpers/price.js // Turbolinks are enabled by default in Rails, // we need to process our script on every page load // https://github.com/turbolinks/turbolinks#full-list-of-events document.addEventListener("turbolinks:ready", () => { // Get language from html tag const lang = document.documentElement.lang; // Find all span tags with data-localize="price" const pricesOnPage = document.querySelectorAll("[data-localize=\"price\"]"); if (pricesOnPage.length > 0) { // Iterate all price span tags [...pricesOnPage].forEach(priceOnPage => { // Modify text in span tag according to current language priceOnPage.textContent = priceOnPage.textContent.toLocaleString( lang, { style: "currency", currency: "USD" } ); }) } });

Because it feels fast, it actually is not. It is using Turbolinks. https://github.com/turbolinks/turbolinks And Laravel Wrapper for Turbolinks: https://github.com/frenzyapp/turbolinks

https://github.com/turbolinks/turbolinks

It provides a smooth UX by fetching next page's HTML in background, then replace the DOM by compareing the diff in HTML. So you won't see a blank page while navigating between pages.

If you have used Turbolinks in the past, you will feel right at home with Turbo Drive. At its core, some JS code intercepts JavaScript events on your application, loads HTML asynchronously, and replaces parts of your HTML markup.

When the Turbolinks technology first came out in Rails 4, some people did not understand what it was really about. I happened to get it right away only because I personally implemented my own version of Turbo Drive for one of my client projects before Turbolinks was released (around 2012), so I really appreciated Turbolinks when it was released. With the latest updates in Rails 7, the Turbolinks technology has been renamed to Turbo Drive (now part of Hotwire) since it not only accelerates hyperlinks anymore, but also form submissions too.

Turbolinks, a great tool to make navigating your web application faster, is no longer under active development. It has been superseded by a new framework called Turbo, which is part of the Hotwire umbrella.

source 'https://rubygems.org' git_source(:github) { |repo| "https://github.com/#{repo}.git" } ruby '2.7.3' # Bundle edge Rails instead: gem 'rails', github: 'rails/rails' gem 'rails', '~> 6.0.3', '>= 6.0.3.7' gem 'mongoid', git: 'https://github.com/mongodb/mongoid.git' # Use Puma as the app server gem 'puma', '~> 4.1' # Use SCSS for stylesheets gem 'sass-rails', '>= 6' # Transpile app-like JavaScript. Read more: https://github.com/rails/webpacker gem 'webpacker', '~> 4.0' # Turbolinks makes navigating your web application faster. Read more: https://github.com/turbolinks/turbolinks gem 'turbolinks', '~> 5' # Build JSON APIs with ease. Read more: https://github.com/rails/jbuilder gem 'jbuilder', '~> 2.7' # Use Redis adapter to run Action Cable in production # gem 'redis', '~> 4.0' # Use Active Model has_secure_password # Use Active Storage variant # gem 'image_processing', '~> 1.2' gem 'axlsx' gem 'caxlsx_rails' #Bootstrap for UI gem 'bootstrap', '~> 5.1.0' gem 'bootstrap-timepicker-rails', '~> 0.1.3' gem 'bootstrap-select-rails', '~> 1.6', '>= 1.6.3' #JQuery Rails gem 'jquery-rails' gem 'rails_12factor', group: :production # Reduces boot times through caching; required in config/boot.rb gem 'bootsnap', '>= 1.4.2', require: false group :development, :test do # Call 'byebug' anywhere in the code to stop execution and get a debugger console gem 'byebug', platforms: [:mri, :mingw, :x64_mingw] end group :development do # Access an interactive console on exception pages or by calling 'console' anywhere in the code. gem 'web-console', '>= 3.3.0' gem 'listen', '~> 3.2' gem 'pry' # Spring speeds up development by keeping your application running in the background. Read more: https://github.com/rails/spring gem 'spring' gem 'spring-watcher-listen', '~> 2.0.0' end group :test do # Adds support for Capybara system testing and selenium driver gem 'capybara', '>= 2.15' gem 'selenium-webdriver' # Easy installation and use of web drivers to run system tests with browsers gem 'webdrivers' gem 'cucumber-rails', require: false gem 'database_cleaner' end # Windows does not include zoneinfo files, so bundle the tzinfo-data gem gem 'tzinfo-data', platforms: [:mingw, :mswin, :x64_mingw, :jruby] #HTTParty for RESTful API calls gem 'httparty' #Paperclip for storing files gem 'paperclip' gem "mongoid-paperclip", :require => "mongoid_paperclip" gem "letter_opener", :group => :development r

We’ll use Ruby on Rails and Turbo to accomplish this, but we could use Turbo’s predecessor, Turbolinks to achieve the same result, and Rails is only incidental to the finished project. We could just as easily use Turbo with any other "multi-page" framework and deliver the same experience.

Check out StimulusJs and Turbolinks their whole purpose is to add only a tiny bit of js to a server side rendered website, to give a feel similar to that of client-side rendered web pages.