console VS msw

>https://console-preview.oxide.computer/

That's pretty cool! The design language is a nice touch for sure.

I've used Storybook during development for a while now and the use case you present is how the Storybook is pitched. I actually agree about the simplicity of discovering the components. What I disagree with, though, is that I can't see value of "develop & test your UI independently from your app" part. It forces me to decouple the state from a component and this in turn adds unnecessary complexity to the architecture.

I'm going to use Oxide console [1] as an example because it has a really good setup of MSW + OpenAPI autogenerated mocks (which means that it doesn't need any complete backend, just a defined contract).

Consider this fairly simple page [2]. If I'm using the Storybook pattern, I'm keeping all of the state outside of the component, which means I now have to manually memoize every single variable defined before the return to make sure that the component doesn't do any unnecessary re-renders. This includes `intervalPicker`, `commonProps`, `setFilterId`, every return of `useDateTimeRangePicker`. With MSW I have benefits not needing the API, testing in real production app, using the same exact mocks for unit tests and development.

[1]: https://github.com/oxidecomputer/console

[2]: https://github.com/oxidecomputer/console/blob/main/app/pages...

SPA mode (what I assume you mean by BFF mode) is brand new, so almost nobody has used it. However, a close example would be the Oxide web console, which we build as an SPA because we want to serve it as static assets from a Rust backend. It's very close to your suggested stack: React + React Router + Tanstack query + zustand, though importantly we also use React Router's loaders to give the app a better-than-SPA feel on navigations. I do plan on moving it to Remix SPA mode when I get a chance, but like I said the result should be very similar so it's not that high a priority for me. If I were starting from scratch I'd probably use Remix SPA.

Repo: https://github.com/oxidecomputer/console/

Live demo here with in-browser MSW mock API: https://oxide-console-preview.vercel.app

VPS providers are nice, but they don't provide the same cloud-level capabilities that Oxide offers. Check out the console to get an idea of what I mean (this is a demo with mock data): https://oxide-console-preview.vercel.app/

Yeah, basically. We do it with a function call where the argument to the function is that interface representing all the API endpoints. `makeHandlers` handles parsing path params, query params, and request body and passes them to each endpoint handler. So the runtime validation of request bodies is also generated — we generate a zod schema for each request body in the OpenAPI definition and use it to parse the actual request body that comes in.

big function call https://github.com/oxidecomputer/console/blob/bd65b9da7019ad...

automatic body parsing and argument passing: https://github.com/oxidecomputer/console/blob/bd65b9da7019ad...

When an endpoint gets added to the spec, we can rerun the generator and get type errors in the `makeHandlers` telling us endpdoints are missing.

We’re going to use Mock Service Worker (MSW) for mocking network requests in our integration tests and in the app during development.

However, I discovered a great combination that transformed my API call testing in TypeScript: Vitest and Mock Service Worker (MSW). Their well-crafted design makes them incredibly easy to use, enhancing the overall testing experience.

While mocks are effective, they require modifying the component's internal logic or mocking global functions like fetch. This can become cumbersome for complex components with numerous API interactions. Here's where MSW shines.

> For those wondering what the use case is, you must not have tried it. It does take work to set up (with each version that's less), but it can be very nice to test in isolation esp in cases where a component is under a login, the 4th page of a 10 page form, etc. Also obviously if you're working on a component library that ships without an app, Storybook can be your development and/or demo app.

I have worked with storybook extensively over the past couple of years and my team is moving away from it in favour of MSW (https://mswjs.io).

For "4th page of a 10 page form" during the development there's hot reloading which is really stable nowadays and haven't failed me, although I understand that some setups are old and it might be easier to configure Storybook than good hot reloading.

I'm not entirely sure about the testing part of it and I'd be grateful if you could elaborate. I haven't felt the need for some special setup with SB because for unit tests, I can test a deeply nested component separately. For E2E tests, I usually test the whole form.

I agree on the component library part, this is probably the only use case where Storybook is 100% justified, but I'm unconvinced about the

Additionally, thank you to all our community launch partners across the frontend ecosystem for helping us bring Storybook 8 to the world! Thanks to Chromatic, Figma, ViteConf, Omlet, DivRiots, story.to.design, StackBlitz, UXpin, Nx, Mock Service Worker, Anima, Zeplin, zeroheight, kickstartDS, and Kendo UI.

similar with msw.js, but fully automated

they could be network mocks (use msw)

With orval, we can also integrate the API client in our unit tests. Orval provides first class support for mocking through the (Mock Service Worker)[https://mswjs.io/] library, and it can automatically generate the MSW handlers for testing server.

Consider a hypothetical scenario where data from a list of companies within an ERP needs to be retrieved. As a personal recommendation, leverage tools like MSW for top-level mocks, which can significantly enhance the testing process.