tetra VS Turbolinks

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)

You can find out more about Turbolinks on the GitHub repository (https://github.com/turbolinks/turbolinks). The repo is now archived, because it’s was integrated in a framework called Turbo, but the functionality is the same.

I know it’s been replaced by Turbo but you can copy Turbolink’s progress bar: https://github.com/turbolinks/turbolinks/blob/master/src/progress_bar.ts. It uses an animation that “trickles” based on response time.

// 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