morphdom VS htmx

morphdom

And sure enough, it works! So what's going on here? Well, clicking the link invokes our reflex, which gets executed right before our current controller action runs again. It allows us to execute any kind of server-side logic, as well as play with the DOM in various ways, but with ruby code. Then, the DOM gets morphed over the wire.

It's super simple actually. And that is in large part to (Morphdom)[https://github.com/patrick-steele-idem/morphdom] which I'm using to compare the output of render() to what is already on the DOM. Morphdom will patch the differences.

I'm using morphdom to patch our DOM. Its a very simple library that compares two DOM elements and updates only the differences. It is extremely performant and does not even use a Virtual DOM, just the DOM you already have!

using HTML-diffing libraries like morphdom to efficiently update elements on the page

no it actually looks like morphdom is what i'm looking for.

It tries to morph into existing DOM (with https://github.com/patrick-steele-idem/morphdom). In case of fail, there is fallback to HTML replacement with outerHTML. All DOM operations after action occurs on component level, not the whole page.

Today, we’re going to build a live search experience once more. This time with StimulusReflex, a “new way to craft modern, reactive web interface with Ruby on Rails”. StimulusReflex relies on WebSockets to pass events from the browser to Rails, and back again, and uses morphdom to make efficient updates on the client-side.

Whenever the JavaScript on the browser-side receives new HTML, it will update the current page using a DOM-diff approach (using morphdom). So only DOM nodes that have actually changed between the initial page load and the updated HTML will be updated.

Updating the DOM is not slow. In fact, there are libraries and frameworks that emphatically reject the virtual dom approach. morphdom is one such example of a DOM modification library. Svelte's author Rich Harris has been proclaiming for a while that virtual dom is an overhead (see e.g. this article). Google's lit-html and lit-element do much of what react does without the virtual dom.

When I work with HTMX I need isolated component that can be reusable a form. So I create a PHP Function that generate the Input Datalist.

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/

Also, there’s some response header juggling you have to do when submitting forms that have a validation step before redirecting: https://github.com/bigskysoftware/htmx/issues/369

I’ve tried to iron out any footguns or server requirements I’ve bumped into while using HTMX & Hotwire in my projects.

✨ 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.