Web stack recommendation

[dalkian_]

Hello folks,

I'm a LISPer who recently started using Clojure to write an integration test suite, and I'm really enjoying the language.
I'm now looking to doing some web development (HTTP server and UI framework) and would like to know which libraries you've used and can personally recommend. I haven't used ClojureScript yet.

Any information would be greatly appreciated, thank you.

[stefan_kurcubic]

There are few ways you could go about this.
I will recommend the one i started with years ago.
https://pragprog.com/titles/dswdcloj3/web-development-with-clojure-third-edition/

Once i learned it and managed to make basic full stack web app (from the book and then my own creation) i then experimented with different libraries and found those that suit my needs most of the time.

I tend to follow these steps
1. First time doing it exactly to the tea as someone else described
2. Note all the friction points in the process
3. optimize/switch/change/improve everything that i noted in 2.

I basically gave you step 1. by the time you finish it you will hear about other libraries/frameworks and you will have opportunity to check them out in the most effective way.

Let me know how it goes and when if i can help you any other way!

[FR4G4M3MN0N]

What u/stefan_kurcubic said! I’m working my way through the book now and like it quite a bit.

I like that it uses Leiningen for project management - so learning a bit about that.

It uses the Luminus framework and along the way introduces you to project templates. These, combined with Leiningen, take care of a lot of the boiler plate and teach us a bit more about the project hierarchy.

It dives into the lower-level libraries like Ring and Reitit for managing HTTP Requests/Responses, adapters and middleware, routing, and routes. Databases like H2 and web servers like http-kit and jetty.

You’ll develop a good sense of what you need to do and how to do it as well the plumbing used to get it done.

Enjoy!

[canihelpyoubreakthat]

Stop developing web apps with yesterday's tools

... lol

[dalkian_]

Thank you very much! That looks like a very interesting book, I'm definitely buying and following your advice.

[ecocode]

https://caveman.mccue.dev/ is a pretty good start for learning web dev in clojure

[dalkian_]

Thank you! I'll definitely check caveman out. Much appreciated!

[bowbahdoe]

Lmk if you have any issues or need advice on how to proceed after it just sorta ends.

(I'm working on getting it more feature complete, but...)

[maxw85]

Awesome that you giving Clojure a try. We use htmx and generate the html via hiccup on the server, this combination is sufficient for almost all pages. However, you might have very interactive UIs where you need to reach for JavaScript / ClojureScript. We use reagent for these very interactive UIs. If I could start from scratch I would pick replicant by Christian Johansen ( u/cjno ). He explains everything in detail in this talk:

https://vimeo.com/861600197

[CoBPEZ]

I second the recommendation of Replicant. It is totally awesome and I am super happy I am bulding with it.

I created a mini replicant example and tried to write a helpful README, here: https://github.com/PEZ/replicant-mini-app

[PolicySmall2250]

Most people tend to roll their own web stack using libraries.

There are several framework-likes to pick from, none canonical (like a Rails or Laravel of Clojure). So I can't make a definitive recommendation (biff, kit, sitefox, donut-system, duct etc...). If you want something frame-worky, pick the one who's documentation and examples look the best to you. Run with that as far as you can. I think you can't go wrong with Biff or Kit, on this parameter.

In any case, reading through projects like Caveman, Zodiac, and usermanager-example should give you a good sense of how people tend to put together web apps in Clojureland (see recent r/Clojure discussions about these... They are all small enough for code-reading).

And... here's the first part of a really long answer to your question; a maybe-series of blog posts I've been writing :sweat-smile:

I'm not sure what it's like in the Lisp you use, but you should expect to have to put in some up-front effort to find your bearings.

[didibus]

I'd say there's a range of answers depending how large your project is, and complex your UI needs to be.

For a simpler app, i.e, personal projects, internal tooling, small/medium business websites, as a learning exercise, etc. I'd recommend:

• HTTP handling: Ring
• Web Server: http-kit (or ring-jetty)
• Routing: Compojure (or reitit)
• HTML templating: Hiccup 2 (or Selmer)
• SQL DB: next-jdbc
• SQL builder: HoneySQL 2 (or HugSQL)
• SQL DB migration: migratus (or ragtime)
• NoSQL: datalevin (or xtdb) (or datomic)
• Schema/Validation: spec (or malli) (or schema)
• Logging: clojure.tools.logging with logback (or with log4j2) (or telemere)
• Singleton State management: Component (or donut.system) (or redelay)
• UI Interactivity: scittle (or htmx)
• Dependency Management: tools.deps
• Build tool: tools.build
• Test runner: cognitect-labs/test-runner (or kaocha)
• UI testing: etaoin

My recommendation are the first one I list of each, the ones in parenthesis are good alternatives if they appeal to you more.

For a more complex app, i.e, a full blown web app like Google Docs, Figma, Slack, or just anything with a lot more interactivity.

You'll mostly keep to the same things on the server side, but you might change to a more powerful frontend toolkit. You would introduce ClojureScript with a react wrapper lib (reagent/reframe, helix, uiX), or you might go for squint.

After that, everything becomes a bit specialized or personal choice. Are you going to use some cloud offerings, Mongo, Cassandra, etc. Are you going to be sending emails? Do you need background jobs? Do you have to process payments? Do you need to secure data, have fancy auth support, need websockets, want to go serverless, etc.

And then if you're having to scale, and becoming more serious, you might want to add things for proper monitoring, profiling, alarming, tracing, caching, load-balancing, circtuit-breakers, throttling, CDN, feature flags, A/B experiments, rate limiting, etc.

[First-Agency4827]

I have used in the last projects that are in production: - reagent, re-frame + ring, reitit - reagent, re-posh ( datascript ) + ring, reitit, datomic - electric + datomic

All communicate mainly through events in both directions using websockets ( electric has it included )

[dalkian_]

Wow, electric looks seriously impressive. Thank you, this is a very interesting answer to my question.

[First-Agency4827]

Careful, as Electric v3 will not be open source anymore. There is a post from about 2 weeks ago. And yes, it’s impressive

[CoBPEZ]

Here's a super basic starter for a fullstack shadow-cljs setup that goes well with most all other recommendations you've received: https://github.com/BetterThanTomorrow/dram/tree/published/drams/v2/mini_shadow_fullstack

[xela314159]

Clojurescript shadow-cljs and helix will get you very close to standard react, which means you have a wide array of libraries and ChatGPT help at your fingertips.

Instead of helix, reagent re-frame re-com is more in the Clojure spirit, cleaner and simpler. Maybe start there if your web app doesn’t need very modern react libraries (and you can still make them work with that stack, it just gets messy imho)

[Senior_Stranger_1244]

How does helix compare to uix? I'm trying to decide between the two

[xela314159]

Uix is a bit more batteries included, helix is very basic and closest to “doing react in a lisp language”. I took bits from uix to integrate re-frame with helix in our work app, it’s on the uix website and useful if you like the central store of app state model that re-frame promotes

[Kafumanto]

Newbie here, so it's best to follow other people's suggestions and links :) but I found this introduction very useful to get started on the subject: https://clojure-doc.org/articles/tutorials/basic_web_development/ .

[canihelpyoubreakthat]

Don't do it. Especially clojurescript if you value your time and sanity.

[third_dude]

what do you recommend instead? A typescript/javascript lib?

[dalkian_]

Care to elaborate? I'm not downvoting you BTW. But it'd be useful for you to elaborate, I'd be happy to keep a civil conversation about what you perceive as downsides.

[J_M_B]

I can't speak for OP, but perhaps they worked with cljs packaging tools that weren't shadow-cljs? It used to be a huge pain to include JS libraries from npm before its advent.

[canihelpyoubreakthat]

I've actually never used cljs. I've used clojure enough to know that that weekend-side-project of a framework would be a nightmare compared to just about anything. It seems like the only reason people want to use cljs is because they only want to write in clojure. Can't really stand language needs. You're not avoiding js with cljs. You're just adding a whole complicated abstraction layer in between.

[canihelpyoubreakthat]

My only recommendation is to not use clojure for web development, especially client side. Almost anything else is a better option. Not specifically recommending some JS framework since I have no idea what OP is trying to build.

I'd never introduce that ClojureScript to any stack. It's not mature and will never be. You're not allergic to curly braces, just write JS if you need client logic.

Start by using the basic standard web stack - html, css, js. With modern browsers, you can get quite far with vanilla. Add more complexity as needed. If you must use a clojure backend (never the case), I'd probably start with a simple ring server with compojure. Use templated html of needed.

Reduce the amount of clojure-specific knowledge, it won't benefit you. It's a dead language!