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Why are you so wedded to JSON responses? HTMX is meant to be used to render html; my big HTMX app basically never(1) renders JSON, so much so that I have a stan
by igor47 2mo ago
Why are you so wedded to JSON responses? HTMX is meant to be used to render html; my big HTMX app basically never(1) renders JSON, so much so that I have a standing instruction to coding agents that if they're rendering JSON they're probably doing something wrong. If you're attached to JSON because you're working with external API s you don't control, a good place to perform those kinds of actions is in your backend, which can then return html to your frontend
(1) the exception is I think in one place concerned a flow for uploading images, where client side requests a signed url, uploads to that url, then registers completion. Getting the signed url back is JSON meant for the uploader
- wasting_time 2mo agoI made a UI with htmx, it works great. But now I want to add a JSON API to the program: I could reuse the same routes (/create, etc), but require an application+json header; or add a full /api/ component essentially duplicating the logic from the main app. Neither option is great.
- igor47 2mo agoI do get kind of annoyed that htmx submits forms using form url encoding. It's non trivial to validate, see https://igor.moomers.org/posts/zod-schemas-htmx https://igor.moomers.org/posts/zod-schemas-htmx As a result for POST requests you have to have htmx routes that accept urlencode and API routes that accept JSON, and JSON is far superior. But for outputs I actually think separating your UI and API is helpful. The code reuse is not worth the entanglement of concerns.
- Aeolos 2mo agoFat services, thin routes. Try moving your business logic to a library and consume it from both your UI and API routes. That minimizes duplication and decouples your public API resolvers (with backwards compatibility requirements etc) from your private UI resolvers (which you want to evolve rapidly to optimize your UIX). That's what we did and it works pretty well in practice.
- yawaramin 2mo agoOk, for the sake of completeness–why do you want to add a JSON API to the program? Quite a lot depends on the reason.
- wasting_time 2mo agoIt's a service, and I want to add a CLI for humans and agents. Aeolos' reply makes a lot of sense, I can refactor the backend into a library and add thin UI and API routes on top of it.
- gofreddygo 2mo agoWhy are you so wedded to JSON responses? I'd assume because of the conception that json = data. Html = presentation. But if you just use barebones html, this could work very well. Just add a wrapper in the api to return json as html to try it out a bit.
- cpburns2009 2mo agoI want to handle a JSON response because I usually return data for multiple page elements. These aren't external APIs, they're requests to the backend server. A simple example is adding a note to a product or order. When you submit it, it gets inlined, and say a visual note counter is incremented. Usually I'll return multiple HTML fragments if it's convenient, but I'll return a data structure if needed.
- Doxin 2mo agoYou can return data for multiple page elements with HTMX too using the "OOB" mechanism.