tetra VS Alpine.js

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.

Unicorn is awesome, and I think most would agree that it's the Django communities answer to Livewire/Liveview/etc. Adam has built a brilliant project and the time he must dedicate to it is amazing!

Last year I had a month free and I had a go at building something for Django in this area, with a bunch of interesting ideas - built on Alpine.js, resumable server side component state, inline component templates. But sadly time is limited and I just can't spend the time needed to push it further. One day I may be able to pivot back to it: https://www.tetraframework.com/

There's a brilliant project called Django Unicorn that aims to be the equivalent of Laravel Livewire for Django. You should take a look.

https://www.django-unicorn.com/

That and HTMX + Alpine.js are a strong combination.

(I also had a bash at building a similar tool for Django called Tetra but unfortunately haven't had the time needed to commit to it: https://www.tetraframework.com)

Most full-stack applications separate frontend and backend code into distinct files; most web frameworks are built based on this structure. As the number of files and lines of code increases, it may increase the complexity of your codebase, thereby making it even more difficult to debug. The complexity caused by these separate files was minimized through the introduction of a framework called Tetra.

One of my apps built on the Django+HTMX stack got traction and no matter how much I loved using HTMX, I found it’s not feasible to keep a clean codebase (facilitating new developers on the team as well) with this stack.

[Tetra](https://www.tetraframework.com/) might be an alternative if you’re hell-bent on not using React.

But, if you want to ship quick, have a maintainable codebase in a technology a lot of devs are familiar with and have the power to instantly have an app for mobile (and buy yourself some time to build one in React Native; code is going to be similar to React.js), I’d recommend using React.

You can use Capacitor.js for instantly shipping a mobile app with your codebase that “just works”. Use Capgo for affordable codepush and you’re set!

But then again, HTMX all the way if you’re not building an app cause not everything is an “app”. At the same time, if you’re building an app with a framework unlike Phoenix, I don’t see why would not go ahead and use a decent JS framework. It seems to be getting a lot of hate and I don’t understand if it’s because of the inability to learn React or what.

tetra

Recently I found a web framework the sits on top of Django and is specifically designed to work with Alpine.js (tetraframework.com). What makes it stand out is that HTMX or Hotwire isn't needed, as Tetra takes care of it. (discussion on ycombinator)

Alpine.js for reactive frontend

✨ 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.

> But honestly, torn towards htmx but undecided.

We are in the middle of migrating from our monster react application into server rendered pages (with jinja2). The velocity at which we are able to ship and the reduction of complexity has been great so far.

Managing client side state for simple things like (is the dropdown open/closed), listening to keyboard events and such can be done with something like alpine-js [1] without all the baggage that something like react brings.

It appears this is already the trend with JS frameworks too - with server side rendering being the new norm.

[1] https://alpinejs.dev/

Sure, you can use any number of JS-avoidance libraries. I'm a fan of Turbo, and there's also htmx, Unpoly, Alpine, hyperscript, swup, barba.js, and probably others.

Direct DOM, but with a library. Specifically AlpineJS since it follows Vue closely in design practices allowing me to scale into a full web application if necessary (basically swapping to Vue takes minimal work). The Morph plugin is specifically what I like using.

If you want more details on the initial setup I encourage you to take a look at the Part I that covers more of the initial implementation. For this portion, I added Prisma as an ORM, a frontend style library called Tachyons, and AlpineJS to handle any client-side interactions. I did this to avoid needing to add a client-side bundler to the build and instead just rely on plain old module imports to compose the frontend. This is now the default for Rails and it is quite nice to not need any additional build tools for the client.

- [swallow-pywebview](https://github.com/rangwea/swallow-pywebview)： Base on [pywebview](https://pywebview.flowrl.com/) using Python，the frontend base on [alpinejs](https://alpinejs.dev/) and [tailwindcss](https://tailwindcss.com/)。

If you’ve followed our other tutorials, you might be familiar with Alpine.js. It’s a lightweight JavaScript library that allows you to add interactivity to your site without writing a single line of JavaScript. It’s incredibly easy to use, and we’ll show you how to make the animation trigger when the user scrolls to it.

The approach is not new, essentially a variation of Knockout, Alpine, and similar "JS-in-HTML" approaches.