Minimal Frontend Framework

July 28, 2023 8:20 AM

Looking for a simple, fast (to learn and use) frontend framework for a PWA

I need to develop a fairly simple app, basically a form whose fields are defined dynamically (from a remote json). It will be a PWA so it can work offline and sync when the user reconnects.
I don't know any of the main frontend frameworks (React, etc), and I don't think it's worth it to learn one of the larger ones for this.
I'd rather use a minimal one that handles basic interactions and build the business logic on top of it.
My experience is mostly python + django + jquery. I'm open to learning typescript or more modern idioms of javascript.

posted by signal to Computers & Internet (6 answers total)

I really like Stimulus. At my work we've switched over to this from jQuery and it's been great. It's billed as "a modest JavaScript framework for the HTML you already have". Essentially, it works like this:

• Your HTML can be rendered however you like, server-side or client-side.
• You define controllers, which are JS classes that implement whatever functionality you want.
• You add data attributes to your HTML to attach controllers to HTML elements and bind event handlers, etc.

Their tutorial gives a nice introduction to various aspects of the framework. We found it pretty simple to learn and it gives a lot more structure to your code than jQuery does, while being nowhere near as heavyweight as React, Vue, Angular, etc.
posted by number9dream at 8:41 AM on July 28, 2023 [1 favorite]

I've used Alpine, it's pretty good.
posted by BungaDunga at 12:35 PM on July 28, 2023

Svelte is great!
posted by sixswitch at 4:03 AM on July 29, 2023 [1 favorite]

Plus one to Alpine, but I've heard good things about the others mentioned as well.
posted by harriet vane at 6:10 AM on July 29, 2023

+1 to Alpine but will note that I have basically stopped using it. (Not because it's bad, but because every time I thought "oh this will be pretty simple" I've ended up in "man i should have just used React/Vue" land.. but you may be better at scoping things than I am.)
posted by mrg at 10:24 AM on July 29, 2023

Another vote for Alpine right here.
posted by my-username at 7:30 AM on July 30, 2023