As an exercise, I intend to replace all front-facing aspects of my Rails application with Backbone.js. Part of the plan includes redesigning everything right down to the CSS.
The issue I'm struggling with is in delegating responsibility for templates and views.
Is there any benefit to implementing the new front-end entirely in Backbone, hence only using Rails as an API?
How do I strike the right balance between Rails and Backbone when it comes to handling the HTML elements of the application?
Since it seems that nobody is going to post an answer to this I'll offer my two cents as just one point of view (I've written elsewhere about the issue of how to get rails and backbone.js to work well together: rails and backbone working together).
Most people in this situation will tend to drop the rails views altogether and migrate everything to backbone.js.
This is what I've done in a project that I'm working on right now.
This is the natural course of events, and particularly once you start getting used to all the complex interesting things you can do with backbone.js and structured javascript, it becomes difficult to turn back and implement standard stateless HTML pages.
As I mentioned in my other answer linked to above; however, there are costs to completely abandoning HTML views and the stateless layer. In my case, I intend to add back pure HTML pages for non-js-enabled browsers for GET requests only once the app has reached a certain level of functionality. We won't support POST or PUT requests unless the user has javascript enabled (or unless they want to go through the JSON API).
That's the balance I've struck: stateless HTML (no-JS) for accessing data, but JS required for posting/changing data. Your choice will vary depending on your use case and target user.
The other thing that I would mention is that if you have been working with rails HTML views on a project for some time, you might be unprepared for the initial overhead required to switch to backbone.js. This is not simply swapping HAML for ERB: you are migrating from a stateless front-end to a stateful one, and that is a potentially huge change (depending on the complexity of the app). I myself was a bit unprepared for the depth of that change, and had to do a lot of catching up before getting our app back on track after making the switch. And we made the switch very early, with minimal functionality already in-place.
Anyway just a few thoughts, hope they help.
Related
I am very new to Vuejs. I have designed a little online store and now want to implement the admin side where he client can add, edit stock items etc.
My question is simply that I need advice on the following:
Should I do this in the same app just using an admin route in router. If yes then should I create a second store (is this good practice)
should I do this in a separate app (possibly just an express app on the backend)
Well it depends your business model and project roadmap. But can I can mention few things you can consider making your decision. I totally agree with other answer as well.
In my experience having your admin app as an separate app, reaped more benefits(NOTE: In My Experience, your might differ).
Benefits
Less overhead on your routing side. Meaning you don't need to build special permission system on your router to only show what the user is aloud to see(Normal users now allowed to see admin related pages).
Adds a bit of reassurance to know that normal user might not stumble on admin pages which they not allowed to see.
If you want to make a change on your admin side only or vice versa, you only have to build/push production for one app. So eliminating potential stuff breaking on the other app you dont want to build/push.
Drawback
If both apps uses same components you either have to duplicate work done on them or have a component library which shares components between project(I created a component lib in my case, which help a lot later on when we needed to create additional apps)
If an user uses both apps, he have to switch between websites(In my this was trivial because users are most either just using the admin or just using the online shop app)
Cost of hosting an additional website.
As with many things, I don't think there is any right or wrong answer, and will mostly depend on your project and objectives. For me, the determining factor when deciding whether to extend a UI or separate it into its own project will mostly depend on the following factors:
How much overlap is there between the UI designs? If you need to re-use significant amounts of code/styling then keeping it as a single project makes sense.
What's the scope of the additions? If the addition is very minor (a single page or two) then keeping it as a single project makes more sense, even if the overlap is minimal. However, if the scope is extensive with lots of different components and routes, separating the projects might be the better choice.
What's your cost/benefit of time to develop the interface, vs time you (or others) will spend using it.
In the end, if it's a full-fledged back-end you're creating it's often best to take the CMS approach and give it a dedicated backend styling, whereas if it's just a few user preferences you need to toggle, then that might be overkill.
Since OpenComponents are intended for rendering small reusable components (with a well defined interface) inside a web page, would using an OpenComponent to render the whole page content including nested OpenComponents be a reasonable use case or would it be considered an anti-pattern?
I have seen indeed OC used for whole pages and I have done it myself in the past.
One thing to reason about, in my opinion, is where the boundaries are in regards of modularising different parts as libraries (so, composition during build time) vs OCs (composition during render time).
In my opinion, despite that is a decision that can be easily reversed during the development, it is worth spending some time at the beginning, perhaps with some Proof of concepts, in order to understand how the development experience is in regard of developing, testing, and deploying.
In my experience, when the ownership of the entire OC content is on a specific team, it's ok to have everything inside modularised as libraries, as there is enough autonomy. When instead, multiple parts are owned by different stakeholders, it makes sense to reason about modularising via OCs, because OC makes easy to explicitly establish the contracts between interfaces and gives autonomy to different owners to develop and deploy independently.
In conclusion, I wouldn't say it is an anti-pattern.
I am recently learning Angular 6 with #ngrx/store while one of the tutorial is to use #ngrx/store for state management, however I don't understand the benefit of using #ngrx/store behind the scene.
For example, for a simple login and signup action, previously by using the service(Let's call it AuthService) we might use it to call the backend api, store "userInfo" or "token" in the AuthService, redirect user to "HOME" page and we can inject AuthService in any component where we need to get the userInfo by using DI, which simply that one file AuthService handles everything.
Now if we are using #ngrx/store, we need to define the Action/State/Reducer/Effects/Selector which probably need to write in 4 or 5 files to handle above action or event, then sometimes still we need to call backend api using service, which seems much much more complicated and redundant...
In some other scenario, I even see some page uses #ngrx/store to store the object or list of object like grid data., is that for some kind of in-memory store usage?
So back to the question, why are we using #ngrx/store over service registration store here in Angular project? I know it's for "STATE MANAGEMENT" usage, but what exactly is the "STATE MANAGEMENT"? Is that something like transaction log and When do we need it? Why would we manage it on the front end? Please feel free to share your suggestion or experience in the #ngrx/store area!
I think you should read those two posts about Ngrx store:
Angular Service Layers: Redux, RxJs and Ngrx Store - When to Use a Store And Why?
Ngrx Store - An Architecture Guide
If the first one explains the main issues solved by Ngrx Store, it also quote this statement from the React How-To "that seems to apply equally to original Flux, Redux, Ngrx Store or any store solution in general":
You’ll know when you need Flux. If you aren’t sure if you need it, you don’t need it.
To me Ngrx store solves multiple issues. For example when you have to deal with observables and when responsability for some observable data is shared between different components. In this case store actions and reducer ensure that data modifications will always be performed "the right way".
It also provides a reliable solution for http requests caching. You will be able to store the requests and their responses, so that you could verify that the request you're making has not a stored response yet.
The second post is about what made such solutions appear in the React world with Facebook's unread message counter issue.
Concerning your solution of storing non-obvervable data in services. It works fine when you're dealing with constant data. But when several components will have to update this data you will probably encounter change detection issues and improper update issues, that you could solve with:
observer pattern with private Subject public Observable and next function
Ngrx Store
I'm almost only reading about the benefits of Ngrx and other Redux like store libraries, while the (in my opinion) costly tradeoffs seem to be brushed off with far too much ease. This is often the only reason that I see given: "The only reason not to use Ngrx is if your app is small and simple". This (I would say) is simply incomplete reasoning and not good enough.
Here are my complaints about Ngrx:
You have logic split out into several different files, which makes the code hard to read and understand. This goes against basic code cohesion and locality principles. Having to jump around to different places to read how an operation is performed is mentally taxing and can lead to cognitive overload and exhaustion.
With Ngrx you have to write a lot more code, which increases the chances of bugs. More code -> more places for bugs to appear.
An Ngrx store can become a dumping ground for all things, with no rhyme or reason. It can become a global hodge podge of stuff that no one can get a coherent overview of. It can grow and grow until no one understands it any more.
I've seen a lot of unnecessary deep object cloning in Ngrx apps, which has caused real performance issues. A particular app I was assigned to work on was taking 40 ms to persist data in the store because of deep cloning of a huge store object. This is over two lost render frames if you are trying to hit a smooth 60 fps. Every interaction felt janky because of it.
Most things that Ngrx does can be done much simpler using a basic service/facade pattern that expose observables from rxjs subjects.
Just put methods on services/facades that return observables - such a method replaces the reducer, store, and selector from Ngrx. And then put other methods on the service/facade to trigger data to be pushed on these observables - these methods replace your actions and effects from Ngrx. So instead of reducers+stores+selectors you have methods that return observables. Instead of actions+effects you have methods that produce data the the observables. Where the data comes from is up to you, you can fetch something or compute something, and then just call subject.next() with the data you want to push.
The rxjs knowledge you need in order to use ngrx will already cause you to be competent in using bare rxjs yourself anyways.
If you have several components that depend on some common data, then you still don't need ngrx, as the basic service/facade pattern explicitly handles this already.
If several services depend on common data between them, then you just make a common service between these services. You still don't need ngrx. It's services all the way down, just like it is components all the way down.
For me Ngrx doesn't look so good on the bottom line.
It is essentially a bloated and over engineered Enterprise™🏢👨💼🤮 grade Rxjs Subject, when you could have just used the good old and trusty Rxjs Subject. Listen to me kids, life is too short for unnecessary complexity. Stick to the bare necessities. The simple bare necessities. Forget about your worries and your strife.
I've been working with NgRx for over three years now. I used it on small projects, where it was handy but unnecessary and I used it in applications where it was perfect fit. And meanwhile I had a chance to work on the project which did not use it and I must say it would profit from it.
On the current project I was responsible for designing the architecture of new FE app. I was tasked to completely refactor the existing application which for the same requirements used non NgRx way and it was buggy, difficult to understand and maintain and there was no documentation. I decided to use NgRx there and I did it because of following reasons:
The application has more than one actor over the data. Server uses
the SSE to push state updates which are independent from user
actions.
At the application start we load most of available data which are
then partially updated with SSE.
Various UI elements are enabled/disabled depending on multiple
conditions which come from BE and from user decisions.
UI has multiple variations. Events from BE can change currently
visible UI elements (texts in dialogs) and even user actions might
change how UI looks and works (recurring dialog can be replaced by
snack if user clicked some button).
State of multiple UI elements must be preserved so when user leaves
the page and goes back the same content (or updated via SSE) is
visible.
As you can see the requirements does not meet the standard CRUD operations web page. Doing it the "Angular" way brought such complexity to the code that it became super hard to maintain and what's worst by the time I joined the team the last two original members were leaving without any documentation of that custom made, non NgRx solution.
Now after the year since refactoring the app to use NgRx I think I can sum up the pros and cons.
Pros:
The app is more organized. State representation is easy to read,
grouped by purpose or data origin and is simple to extend.
We got rid of many factories, facades and abstract classes which lost
their purpose. The code is lighter, and components are 'dumber', with
less hidden tricks coming from somewhere else.
Complicated state calculations are made simple using effects and
selectors and most components can be now fully functional just by
injecting the store and dispatching the actions or selecting the
needed slice of the state while handling multiple actions at once.
Because of updated app requirements we were forced to refactor the
store already and it was mostly Ctrl + C, Ctrl + V and some renaming.
Thanks to Redux Dev Tools it is easier to debug and optimize (yep
really)
This is most important - even thought our state itself is unique the
store management we are using is not. It has support, it has
documentation and it's not impossible to find solutions to some
difficult problems on the internet.
Small perk, NgRx is another technology you can put to your CV :)
Cons:
My colleagues were new to the NgRx and it took some time for them to
adapt and fully understand it.
On some occasions we introduced the issue where some actions were
dispatched multiple times and it was difficult to find the cause of
it and fix it
Our Effects are huge, that's true. They can get messy but that's what
we have pull requests for. And if this code wasn't there it would
still end up somewhere else :)
Biggest issue? Actions are differentiated by their string type. Copy
an action, forget to rename it and boom, something different is
happening than you expect, and you have no clue why.
As a conclusion I would say that in our case the NgRx was a great choice. It is demanding at first but later everything feels natural and logical. Also, when you check the requirements, you'll notice that this is a special case. I understand the voices against NgRx and in some cases I would support them but not on this project. Could we have done it using 'Angular' way? Of course, it was done this way before, but it was a mess. It was still full of boiler plate code, things happening in different places without obvious reasons and more.
Anyone who would have the chance to compare those two versions would say the NgRx version is better.
There is also a 3rd option, having data in service and using service directly in html, for instance *ngFor="let item of userService.users". So when you update userService.users in service after add or update action is automatically rendered in html, no need for any observables or events or store.
If the data in your app is used in multiple components, then some kind of service to share the data is required. There are many ways to do this.
A moderately complex app will eventually look like a front end back end structure, with the data handling done in services, exposing the data via observables to the components.
At one point you will need to write some kind of api to your data services, how to get data in and out, queries, etc. Lots of rules like immutability of the data, and well defined single paths to modify the data. Not unlike the server backend, but much quicker and responsive than the api calls.
Your api will end up looking like one of the many state management libraries that already exist. They exist to solve difficult problems. You may not need them if your app is simple.
NGRX sometimes has a lot of files and a lot of duplicate code. Currently working on a fix for this. To make generic type classes for certain NGRX state management situations that are very common inside an Angular project like pagers and object loading from back-ends
I really like all the boilerplate code Spring Data Rest writes for you, but I'd rather have just a 'regular?' REST server without all the HATEOAS stuff. The main reason is that I use Dojo Toolkit on the client side, and all of its widgets and stores are set up such that the json returned is just a straight array of items, without all the links and things like that. Does anyone know how to configure this with java config so that I get all the mvc code written for me, but without all the HATEOAS stuff?
After reading Oliver's comment (which I agree with) and you still want to remove HATEOAS from spring boot.
Add this above the declaration of the class containing your main method:
#SpringBootApplication(exclude = RepositoryRestMvcAutoConfiguration.class)
As pointed out by Zack in the comments, you also need to create a controller which exposes the required REST methods (findAll, save, findById, etc).
So you want REST without the things that make up REST? :) I think trying to alter (read: dumb down) a RESTful server to satisfy a poorly designed client library is a bad start to begin with. But here's the rationale for why hypermedia elements are necessary for this kind of tooling (besides the probably familiar general rationale).
Exposing domain objects to the web has always been seen critically by most of the REST community. Mostly for the reason that the boundaries of a domain object are not necessarily the boundaries you want to give your resources. However, frameworks providing scaffolding functionality (Rails, Grails etc.) have become hugely popular in the last couple of years. So Spring Data REST is trying to address that space but at the same time be a good citizen in terms of restfulness.
So if you start with a plain data model in the first place (objects without to many relationships), only want to read them, there's in fact no need for something like Spring Data REST. The Spring controller you need to write is roughly 10 lines of code on top of a Spring Data repository. When things get more challenging the story gets becomes more intersting:
How do you write a client without hard coding URIs (if it did, it wasn't particularly restful)?
How do you handle relationships between resources? How do you let clients create them, update them etc.?
How does the client discover which query resources are available? How does it find out about the parameters to pass etc.?
If your answers to these questions is: "My client doesn't need that / is not capable of doing that.", then Spring Data REST is probably the wrong library to begin with. What you're basically building is JSON over HTTP, but nothing really restful then. This is totally fine if it serves your purpose, but shoehorning a library with clear design constraints into something arbitrary different (albeit apparently similar) that effectively wants to ignore exactly these design aspects is the wrong approach in the first place.
I have 2 applications that are going to be built (possibly a 3rd API), all are going to use the same database. What is the best way to use the same models across all applications.
Also, what are some of the caveats you have experienced or foresee with this method. Looking for the best solution to this.
Rails, as opinionated software, prefers a single app, rather than shared models. I've tried it both ways. Are you going to just have copies of the models that can get out of sync? Are you still planning to use Rails' migrations? When you have multiple apps, migrations become difficult. Do you use just one app for migrations? Then you lose the ability to check in migrations along with the code it refers to. Automating builds can become very difficult. You can possibly find a way share migrations too, but that requires some source code management sleight-of-hand which ultimately makes it more difficult to do separate apps and still get everything Rails has to offer. At that point you may want to look into Sinatra.
On the other hand, there's a lot of organizing you can do in a single app that keeps the model domain shared, yet separates the controllers, such as using namespaces or engines. I'd recommend those techniques.