Hacker News Reader

Comment by sfusato | Hacker News Reader

You would have latency in all apps that require a server round-trip regardless of the stack used.

When you need to go to the server, you go to the server. There's no other way around it.

I would be curious to hear how you solve this in other stacks? SPAs, whatever, when they need something from the server, they reach for the server.

View on HN

imagine an SPA for a basic CRUD system. there's a list view and details view with a delete button that returns you to the list.

in liveview server renders me the list view, i click details, server renders me details view, i click delete button, server renders me the list view.

if there's big latency/connection error/etc between clicking delete and getting back the rendered list - user just has to wait.

in spa i could optimistically assume that delete worked and render the list that i already have cached without the deleted item, allowing user to continue working immediately and if there was a disconnect/error - i could retry that delete in the background without bothering user, only prompting them after some number of retries.

don't see how could i implement this workflow in liveview.

You can do that in LiveView just as easily. Remove the item client side, then pushEvent to the server to handle the deletion. In case of any errors, notify the user, refresh the state .etc

pushEvent, pushEventTo (from client to server) [0]

push_event (from server to client) [1]

[0] https://hexdocs.pm/phoenix_live_view/js-interop.html#client-...

[1] https://hexdocs.pm/phoenix_live_view/Phoenix.LiveView.html#p...

> Remove the item client side

so, "just use JS"?

> In case of any errors, notify the user, refresh the state .etc

so, "just use JS"?

every time you say "just use JS" you're diminishing the usecase of liveview because if i need so much js logic - why do i need to also use liveview if i can just use a framework/environment where i can share codebase between client and server seamlessly and have full control.

You stated don't see how could i implement this workflow in liveview.. I've presented you a way.

In case of any errors, notify the user, refresh the state .etc => This would all be done server-side and the client side would simply react automatically. The client side code in this case would have been minimal.

I don't think I'm diminishing anything. For quite a few years I was neck deep in React/Vue world. Now that I'm actively using LiveView, I can properly compare the differences between both approaches, cons and pros. For any new project, in the majority of cases I would pick Elixir with Phoenix LiveView instead of Elixir/Phoenix (backend) with React/Vue (frontend).

You’ve presented a workaround and a hack tbh, not something natively supported because the workflow doesn’t map to liveview model, which is fine but you have to be honest with yourself and acknowledge when stuff like that happens, otherwise you’re in for lots of fun down the line.

> For any new project, in the majority of cases I would pick Elixir with Phoenix LiveView instead of Elixir/Phoenix (backend) with React/Vue (frontend).

This could just be recency bias. New tech is always exciting, old tech is always linked to memories of all the issues you’ve had in the past.

I wouldn't say it's a hack, but I would agree it's not the standard way to do things in the LiveView world, exactly because latency it's an overstated or misunderstood issue. But if you want to do more, LiveView gives you the tools.

> This could just be recency bias. New tech is always exciting, old tech is always linked to memories of all the issues you’ve had in the past.

I still maintain some React/Vue apps and work with on a daily basis, so it's not a distant memory.

I like choosing the right tool for the right job. For example, I would still choose ReactNative over 2 different code bases for a mobile app for a small team that needs to move fast. For the 5% of cases when that wouldn't do you would need to go native. I see the situation similarly with LiveView. It's hard to beat its productivity & power in 95% of use cases.

I did a deep dive into liveview and this was my take away.

Its nice tech, but once you start introducing JS again to improve UX you really start asking yourself why you didn't just build it with react in the first place.

You could just delete the row with alpine or do a 3 line JS hook if you wanted to, it's quick and easy. That sounds a strange workflow though, it's generally better to make users wait for deletion.

isn't it funny that when you're trying to praise tech you like, all sorts of examples jump into mind, but when you try criticizing something you like - all that imagination vanishes and all existing examples can be dismissed as strange :)

I find it strange because that's not a behaviour I would use, but to each their own, it's the beauty of the web :).

If you really want to do it, you can add 3 lines on your project and that will work with any CRUD page you're building, I don't think that's unreasonable or difficult to do.

Edit:

Actually thinking about it, if you just made a form for that delete button and a phx-disable-with="" on the row it would probably work straight away without any JS hook.

surely you recognize that there is a gap in functionality between liveview and fully fledged frameworks that provide more granular control over ui interactions?

Like which other frameworks? You can code that example feature you pointed out quicker than in React if you want to. You have all the control you want in LiveView.

If you want a delete button per row, no code is needed and the phx-disable-with will work out of the box, if you want a global delete button on the top which deletes multiple rows front-end first before acknowledgement (with checkboxes + delete like in Gmail), 5 lines of JS maximum in a hook and you're set.

> You have all the control you want in LiveView

that you can't even acknowledge that there is a gap in functionality between liveview, a fairly opinionated framework for server side rendering and fully fledged client-side frameworks tells me this is not going to be a productive conversation, so i'm out, bye

Have you even used LiveView? It's not opinionated in any way, you can do whatever you want with it. It gives you extra features to remotely change pages but if you don't like having them you don't have to use them at all and can plug your favourite JS framework if you want to (or you can just use it for parts of the apps and not the rest if you want to).

I've worked for years with React and Angular and I don't really miss anything with a LiveView-based stack. LiveView features gives you 90% of what you want out of the box and for the rest it's fine having a bit of JS here and there to ensure a good experience.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com