When Javascript projects write "Isomorphic", what do they mean?
It certainly isn't isomorphic in the usual sense in Math of a bijection between structures (categories), because even if it were it is a special case of some kind.
It certainly isn't isomorphic in the usual sense in Math of a bijection between structures (categories), because even if it were it is a special case of some kind.
> "From the beginning there were people opposing the term, suggesting alternatives such as monomorphic or polymorphic" [1]
As I understand it, when an SPA is "isomorphic", it means it can be statically pre-rendered to some degree. This property is then used as follows:
- you pre-render some html of your app server-side
- when a client requests a page, send the pre-rendered html first
- then, send over all your JS (React or whatever), which will take over the rendering when it's ready.
[2]
So "isomorphic" refers to some sort of behavioral equivalence, i.e. "you can run it server-side and you'll get the same output".
Painting with broad strokes, I guess you could interpret "this app is isomorphic" as shorthand for "this app can be pre-rendered into a static form that's isomorphic to its usual dynamic form" (in roughly the same way a pure function is isomorphic to a lookup table). In reality that property would probably be too strong for most cases, but I guess it's "morally correct".
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[1] https://medium.com/@ghengeveld/isomorphism-vs-universal-java...
[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isomorphic_JavaScript#Mechan...