Javascript

Local-First Application Development is Back with Dev Agrawal

May 9, 2024

2 min read

In a world where connectivity is often taken for granted, the concept of "local first" applications is gaining traction. In this episode of the Modern Web Podcast, Dev Agrawal sheds light on this innovative approach, which prioritizes user devices as the primary data source. By enabling offline access and user control, local-first apps are revolutionizing the way we interact with technology.

Traditionally, applications have relied on server-centric models, where data is stored and managed on remote servers. However, local-first architecture flips this paradigm by placing user devices at the forefront. By doing so, these apps empower users with offline access and control over their data.

One of the key advantages of local-first architecture is its ability to create personalized experiences. By leveraging the data stored on user devices, apps can tailor their functionality to individual preferences and needs. Moreover, local-first apps excel at synchronization, ensuring that data remains consistent across multiple devices. This seamless synchronization allows users to switch between devices effortlessly, without worrying about data loss or inconsistencies.

Data ownership is a critical aspect of local-first applications. With the user's device holding the definitive data version, individuals have greater control over their information. This is particularly important in collaborative environments, where multiple users need to access and modify shared data. To address this, local-first apps employ Conflict-free Replicated Data Types (CRDTs), which ensure that conflicts are resolved automatically and data integrity is maintained. By prioritizing data ownership and collaboration, local-first architecture fosters a more inclusive and efficient work environment.

While local-first architecture offers numerous benefits, it is important to strike a balance between local and server data management. Certain data, such as large media files or complex computations, may still be better suited for server storage. Additionally, server-centric models can provide valuable backup and recovery options. As web development paradigms evolve, finding the right balance between local and server data management will be crucial in creating integrated user experiences and adaptable frameworks.

This Dot is a consultancy dedicated to guiding companies through their modernization and digital transformation journeys. Specializing in replatforming, modernizing, and launching new initiatives, we stand out by taking true ownership of your engineering projects.

We love helping teams with projects that have missed their deadlines or helping keep your strategic digital initiatives on course. Check out our case studies and our clients that trust us with their engineering.

Understanding Vue.js's <Suspense> and Async Components

In this blog post, we will delve into how and async components work, their benefits, and practical implementation strategies to make your Vue.js applications more efficient and user-friendly. Without further ado, let’s get started! Suspense Let's kick off by explaining what Suspense components are. They are a new component that helps manage how your application handles components that need to await for some async resource to resolve, like fetching data from a server, waiting for images to load, or any other task that might take some time to complete before they can be properly rendered. Imagine you're building a web page that needs to load data from a server, and you have 2 components that fetch the data you need as they will show different things. Typically, you might see a loading spinner or a skeleton while the data is being fetched. Suspense components make it easier to handle these scenarios. Instead of manually managing loading states and error messages for each component that needs to fetch data, Suspense components let you wrap all these components together. Inside this wrapper, you can define: 1. What to show while the data is loading (like a loading spinner). 2. The actual content that should be displayed once the data is successfully fetched. This way, Vue Suspense simplifies the process of handling asynchronous operations (like data fetching) and improves the user (and the developer) experience by providing a more seamless and integrated way to show loading states and handle errors. There are two types of async dependencies that can wait on: - Components with an async setup() hook. This includes components using with top-level await expressions. *Note: These can only be used within a component.* - Async Components. Async components Vue's asynchronous components are like a smart loading system for your web app. Imagine your app as a big puzzle. Normally, you'd put together all the pieces at once, which can take time. But what if some pieces aren't needed right away? Asynchronous components help with this. Here's how they work: - Load Only What's Needed: Just like only picking up puzzle pieces you need right now, asynchronous components let your app load only the parts that are immediately necessary. Other parts can be loaded later, as needed. - Faster Start: Your app starts up faster because it doesn't have to load everything at once. It's like quickly starting with the border of a puzzle and filling in the rest later. - Save Resources: It uses your web resources (like internet data) more wisely, only grabbing what’s essential when it's essential. In short, asynchronous components make your app quicker to start and more efficient, improving the overall experience for your users. Example: ` Combining Async Components and Suspense Let's explore how combining asynchronous components with Vue's Suspense feature can enhance your application. When asynchronous components are used with Vue's Suspense, they form a powerful combination. The key point is that async components are "suspensable" by default. This means they can be easily integrated with Suspense to improve how your app handles loading and rendering components. When used together, you can do the following things: - Centralized Loading and Error Handling: With Suspense, you don't have to handle loading and error states individually for each async component. Instead, you can define a single loading indicator or error message within the Suspense component. This unified approach simplifies your code and ensures consistency across different parts of your app. - Flexible and Clean Code Structure: By combining async components with Suspense, your code becomes more organized and easier to maintain. An asynchronous component has the flexibility to operate independently of Suspense's oversight. By setting suspensible: false in its options, the component takes charge of its own loading behavior. This means that instead of relying on Suspense to manage when it appears, the component itself dictates its loading state and presentation. This option is particularly useful for components that have specific loading logic or visuals they need to maintain, separate from the broader Suspense-driven loading strategy in the application. In practice, this combo allows you to create a user interface that feels responsive and cohesive. Users see a well-timed loading indicator while the necessary components are being fetched, and if something goes wrong, a single, well-crafted error message is displayed. It's like ensuring that the entire puzzle is either revealed in its completed form or not at all rather than showing disjointed parts at different times. How it works When a component inside the boundary is waiting for something asynchronous, shows fallback content. This fallback content can be anything you choose, such as a loading spinner or a message indicating that data is being loaded. Example Usage Let’s use a simple example: In the visual example provided, imagine we have two Vue components: one showcasing a selected Pokémon, Eevee, and a carousel showcasing a variety of other Pokémon. Both components are designed to fetch data asynchronously. Without , while the data is being fetched, we would typically see two separate loading indicators: one for the Eevee Pokemon that is selected and another for the carousel. This can make the page look disjointed and be a less-than-ideal user experience. We could display a single, cohesive loading indicator by wrapping both components inside a boundary. This unified loading state would persist until all the data for both components—the single Pokémon display and the carousel—has been fetched and is ready to be rendered. Here's how you might structure the code for such a scenario: ` Here, is the component that's performing asynchronous operations. While loading, the text 'Loading...' is displayed to the user. Great! But what about when things don't go as planned and an error occurs? Currently, Vue's doesn't directly handle errors within its boundary. However, there's a neat workaround. You can use the onErrorCaptured() hook in the parent component of to catch and manage errors. Here's how it works: ` If we run this code, and let’s say that we had an error selecting our Pokemon, this is how it is going to display to the user: The error message is specifically tied to the component where the issue occurred, ensuring that it's the only part of your application that shows an error notification. Meanwhile, the rest of your components will continue to operate and display as intended, maintaining the overall user experience without widespread disruption. This targeted error handling keeps the application's functionality intact while indicating where the problem lies. Conclusion stands out as a formidable feature in Vue.js, transforming the management of asynchronous operations into a more streamlined and user-centric process. It not only elevates the user experience by ensuring smoother interactions during data loading phases but also enhances code maintainability and application performance. I hope you found this blog post enlightening and that it adds value to your Vue.js projects. As always, happy coding and continue to explore the vast possibilities Vue.js offers to make your applications more efficient and engaging!...

Apr 24, 2024

6 mins

VueWeb PerformanceUXJavaScript

Vercel vs. VPS - What's the drama, and which one should you choose?

Vercel vs. VPS - What's the drama, and which one should you choose? Vercel recently announced an update to their pricing. For some users, that meant a significant increase in costs, which has led to some discussions about the costs of using cloud providers like Vercel, with a few suggesting that a VPS is a far superior and cost-effective solution. Does it make sense to move your popular app to a VPS and save hundreds of dollars? As you might have guessed, the issue is far more nuanced than some tweets suggest. Let's break it down. Integrations Let's talk about the elephant in the room first. Vercel is tailored explicitly for Next.js, providing tooling for conformance checks, continuous deployment, branch previews, and more. All of that works out of the box, and if you were to figure all of that out on your own, you'd be spending a lot of time and money on it, exposing yourself to potential bugs, problems, and disturbances in your workflow. If you're a one-person startup, you may get away with setting up a simple CI/CD pipeline on a VPS, but as your team grows, you'll need to invest more time and money into maintaining it. And that's not even considering the time you'll spend onboarding new team members and teaching them how to use your custom setup. That being said, some tools can make things easier for you and standardize the process. For example, coolify does a great job of providing a simple and easy-to-use interface for deploying Next.js apps to a VPS. You could also deploy a Docker container with all the necessary tools and configurations, but that's another can of worms. There’s also OpenNext adapter that lets you deploy across different environments, such as AWS. While that takes care of the deployment part, it doesn't solve the potential need for other integrations like conformance checks, branch previews, etc. Scaling and Performance Scaling is sometimes overrated in software engineering. Especially at the beginning of a greenfield project, you're better off focusing on building a great product and getting users than worrying about scaling. That said, it's essential to have a plan for scaling when the time comes, not to mention projects that are already popular and are considering moving to a VPS. I'm not saying you can't successfully run a popular high-traffic project built in Laravel from a Debian server in your basement. But I'm also not suggesting that you should optimize your hosting costs at the expense of investing precious time and energy into building and configuring infrastructure that could be better spent on building your product, especially given the fact that most cloud providers offer a free tier that can handle a decent amount of traffic. And there is one more thing to consider. Vercel has a global network of edge nodes that can cache your content and serve it to users from the nearest location, which can significantly improve your app's performance. If your app is targeted at a global audience, serving it from one server located in a single region may provide a suboptimal experience for users in other areas. Edge Nodes Speaking of edge nodes and Vercel, there has been a pretty significant announcement made by Vercel recently. They have moved away from edge rendering back to Node.js. The reason is that while they initially thought it may be worth the trade-off, having your compute resources far away from your database makes the app slower. Furthermore, the cost benefits of edge rendering are less significant than they initially thought. That doesn't mean they moved away from edge nodes completely. Static assets and the essential HTML and CSS are still served by the edge nodes. With networks getting fast and Node.js more performant, however, the argument for having a VPS with a CDN instead of a cloud provider like Vercel becomes more compelling. Skill Requirements Running a VPS requires a certain level of technical expertise. You must know how to set up and configure a server, install and configure software, manage security, monitor performance, and troubleshoot problems. If you're uncomfortable with these tasks, you may spend a lot of time learning and troubleshooting. While learning new things is great, it's not always the best use of your time, especially if you're trying to build a product. Part of the cost of using a cloud provider like Vercel is that they take care of all the technical details so you can focus on building your product. Suppose you're not comfortable with managing servers. In that case, it is worth paying extra for the convenience of not having to worry about it while benefiting from a global network of edge nodes and integrations that can save you time and money in the long run. If you're a developer who enjoys tinkering with servers and learning new things, running a VPS can be a fun and rewarding experience. Similarly, running a VPS may be a good option for you if you're a small team with a dedicated DevOps person who can handle all the technical details. But suppose you're a solo founder or a big company with an abundant budget. In that case, you may be better off using a cloud provider like Vercel that can save you time and money in the long run, allowing you to validate PRs in real-time and comment on a build preview in the process. Security A considerable concern when running a VPS is security. You must keep your server updated with security patches, configure firewalls, monitor logs for suspicious activity, and take other steps to protect your server from attacks. There are a lot of bots out there scanning the internet for vulnerable servers, and if you're not careful, you could end up with a compromised server that's being used to send spam, mine cryptocurrency, or launch DDoS attacks. Most cloud providers take care of these things for you, so you don't have to worry about them. Speaking of DDoS attacks, cloud providers usually have built-in DDoS protection that can help mitigate the impact of an attack. If you're running a VPS, you'll need to set up your own DDoS protection, which can be a complex and expensive process, or set up a CloudFlare in front of your server, effectively giving into a cloud provider anyway. That being said, I have read a few horror stories about landing an enormous bill from a cloud provider after a DDoS attack, so it's not all sunshine and rainbows. However, if you opt for a cloud hosting solution such as Vercel and unfortunately get attacked, remember they can be chill about it and refund some of the costs. Be aware of the possibility of a DDoS attack, though, and set up limits and alerts to prevent it from happening in the first place. Tech Stack Flexibility While you don't have to worry about keeping your server up to date when using a cloud provider, it is unfortunate that most cloud providers are usually late in supporting the newest Node.js versions. Despite Node.js 20 being the latest LTS version, some cloud providers' features still don't support it. If you plan to use bleeding-edge technologies or have specific requirements that cloud providers don't support, you may be better off running a VPS. Cost Finally, let's talk about cost. Running a VPS can be cheaper than using a cloud provider like Vercel, especially if you have a high-traffic app generating a lot of revenue. However, you need to consider the hidden costs of running a VPS, such as the time and money you'll spend on maintaining it, the cost of setting up and configuring a server, the cost of monitoring and troubleshooting problems, and the cost of scaling and performance optimization. If we take a model app that transfers around 1.5 TB of data per month, does a bit of computation, and we apply the new Vercel pricing, it could look something like this: 1. Base Plan Cost: $20 per month 2. Additional Fast Data Transfer: 500 GB x $0.15/GB = $75 (1 TB included in the base plan) 3. Additional Fast Origin Transfer: 50 GB x $0.06/GB = $3 (100 GB included in the base plan) 4. Additional Edge Requests: 2 million x $2/million = $4 (10 million included in the base plan) 5. Additional Function Execution Time: 200 GB-hours x $0.18/GB-hour = $36 (1,000 GB-hours included in the base plan) That would bring our total cost to $138 per month, assuming you pay for only one seat. If we decided to run a VPS instead, we would need something with at least 4 GB RAM, 2 vCPUs, and 80 GB SSD storage. A VPS with those specs would cost around $20 per month. You would also need to add the cost of a CDN, which would amount to $20 per month if you chose the CloudFlare Pro plan. That would bring our total cost to $40 per month. In this case, running a VPS would be significantly cheaper than using Vercel. However, this assumes that you know how much your app will scale in advance or that you're willing to go through the hassle of migrating your application to a larger server when the time comes. The thing is, if you're starting a new project, you could probably start with the free tier of a cloud provider like Vercel, later transfer to the Pro plan, and scale up as needed. In many cases, the appeal of the pay-as-you-go model is worth paying a bit extra in the long run. Conclusion Should you move your popular app to a VPS and save some dollars? The answer is it depends. It all boils down to assessing your project's specific needs, technical expertise, and growth expectations. The recent uproar regarding Vercel's pricing changes has illuminated this dilemma, presenting a classic case of convenience versus cost. Vercel stands out for its seamless integration with Next.js, providing out-of-the-box solutions that significantly reduce the time and effort required for deployment and ongoing maintenance. This convenience is especially valuable for developers leveraging modern development practices with minimal setup. Additionally, Vercel's edge network capabilities offer significant performance benefits for global applications, ensuring faster load times and improved user experience. However, these benefits come at a cost, which can be significantly higher than running a VPS, especially as your application scales. For those with the requisite skills, a VPS can offer a more cost-effective solution without the constraints of a platform-centric approach. This route grants more control over the hosting environment and potentially lowers costs at the expense of increased complexity in setup, scaling, and maintenance. It's also important to consider the non-financial costs associated with each option. Vercel provides a robust, developer-friendly environment that can significantly accelerate development cycles and reduce the burden on your team. On the other hand, managing a VPS requires a steep learning curve and ongoing attention to security, performance, and scalability. TLDR: If you're a solo founder or a small team looking to deploy and scale your application with minimal overhead quickly, Vercel is likely the best choice. If you are a Linux enthusiast or have a dedicated DevOps team, you can create a decent setup with a VPS and a CDN, but be prepared to invest time and effort into maintaining it. If you are a bigger company or team, the decision will likely depend on your specific needs, growth expectations, and budget constraints....

May 8, 2024

8 mins

DevOpsNodeJSJavaScriptVercel

How to Leverage Apollo Client Fetch Policies Like the Pros

Apollo Client provides a rich ecosystem and cache for interfacing with your GraphQL APIs. You write your query and leverage the useQuery hook to fetch your data. It provides you with some state context and eventually resolves your query. That data is stored in a local, normalized, in-memory cache, which allows Apollo Client to respond to most previously run requests near instantaneously. This has huge benefits for client performance and the feel of your apps. However, sometimes Apollo's default doesn't match the user experience you want to provide. They provide fetch policies to allow you to control this behavior on each query you execute. In this article, we'll explore the different fetch policies and how you should leverage them in your application. cache-first This is the default for Apollo Client. Apollo will execute your query against the cache. If the cache can fully fulfill the request, then that's it, and we return to the client. If it can only partially match your request or cannot find any of the related data, the query will be run against your GraphQL server. The response is cached for the next query and returned to the handler. This method prioritizes minimizing the number of requests sent to your server. However, it has an adverse effect on data that changes regularly. Think of your social media feeds - they typically contain constantly changing information as new posts are generated. Or a real-time dashboard app tracking data as it moves through a system. cache-first is probably not the best policy for these use cases as you won't fetch the latest data from the upstream source. You can lower the cache time of items for the dashboard to avoid the staleness issue and still minimize the requests being made, but this problem will persist for social media feeds. The cache-first policy should be considered for data that does not change often in your system or data that the current user fully controls. Data that doesn't change often is easily cached, and that's a recommended pattern. For data that the user controls, we need to consider how that data changes. If only the current user can change it, we have 2 options: Return the updated data in the response of any mutation which is used to update the cache Use cache invalidation methods like refetchQueries or onQueryUpdated These methods will ensure that our cache stays in sync with our server allowing the policy to work optimally. However, if other users in the system can make changes that impact the current user's view, then we can not invalidate the cache properly using these strategies which makes this policy unideal. network-only This policy skips the cache lookup and goes to the server to fetch the results. The results are stored in the cache for other operations to leverage. Going back to the example I gave in my explanation cache-first of a social media feed, the network-only policy would be a great way to implement the feed itself as it's ever-changing, and we'll likely even want to poll for changes every 10s or so. The following is an example of what this component could look like: ` Whenever this SocialFeed component is rendered, we always fetch the latest results from the GraphQL server ensuring we're looking at the current data. The results are put in the cache which we can leverage in some children components. cache-only cache-only only checks the cache for the requested data and never hits the server. It throws an error if the specified cache items cannot be found. At first glance, this cache policy may seem unhelpful because it's unclear if our cache is seeded with our data. However, in combination with the network-only policy above, this policy becomes helpful. This policy is meant for components down tree from network-only level query. This method is for you if you're a fan of React components' compatibility. We can modify the return of our previous example to be as follows: ` Notice we're not passing the full post object as a prop. This simplifies our Post component types and makes later refactors easier. The Post would like like the following: ` In this query, we're grabbing the data directly from our cache every time because our top-level query should have fetched it. Now, a small bug here makes maintainability a bit harder. Our top-level GetFeed query doesn't guarantee fetching the same fields. Notice how our Post component exports a fragment. Fragments are a feature Apollo supports to share query elements across operations. In our SocialFeed component, we can change our query to be: ` Now, as we change our Post to use new fields and display different data, the refactoring is restricted to just that component, and the upstream components will detect the changes and handle them for us making our codebase more maintainable. Because the upstream component is always fetching from the network, we can trust that the cache will have our data, making this component safe to render. With these examples, though, our users will likely have to see a loading spinner or state on every render unless we add some server rendering. cache-and-network This is where cache-and-network comes to play. With this policy, Apollo Client will run your query against your cache and your GraphQL server. This further simplifies our example above if we want to provide the last fetched results to the user but then update the feed immediately upon gathering the latest data. This is similar to what X/Twitter does when you reload the app. You'll see the last value that was in the cache then it'll render the network values when ready. This can cause a jarring user experience though, if the data is changing a lot over time, so I recommend using this methodology sparsely. However, if you wanted to update our existing example, we'd just change our SocialFeed component to use this policy, and that'll keep our client and server better in sync while still enabling 10s polling. no-cache This policy is very similar to the network-only policy, except it bypasses the local cache entirely. In our previous example, we wrote engagement as a sub-selector on a Post and stored fields there. These metrics can change in real time pretty drastically. Chat features, reactions, viewership numbers, etc., are all types of data that may change in real time. The no-cache policy is good when this type of data is active, such as during a live stream or within the first few hours of a post going out. You may typically want to use the cache-and-network policy eventually but during that active period, you'll probably want to use no-cache so your consumers can trust your data. I'd probably recommend changing your server to split these queries and run different policies for the operations for performance reasons. I haven't mentioned this yet, but you can make the fetch policy on a query dynamic, meaning you combine these different policies' pending states. This could look like the following: ` We pass whether the event is live to the component that then leverages that info to determine if we should cache or not when fetching the chat. That being said, we should consider using subscription operations for this type of feature as well, but that's an exercise for another blog post. standby This is the most uncommon fetch policy, but has a lot of use. This option runs like a cache-first query when it executes. However, by default, this query does not run and is treated like a "skip" until it is manually triggered by a refetch or updateQueries caller. You can achieve similar results by leveraging the useLazyQuery operator, but this maintains the same behavior as other useQuery operators so you'll have more consistency among your components. This method is primarily used for operations pending other queries to finish or when you want to trigger the caller on a mutation. Think about a dashboard with many filters that need to be applied before your query executes. The standby fetch policy can wait until the user hits the Apply or Submit button to execute the operation then calls a await client.refetchQueries({ include: ["DashboardQuery"] }), which will then allow your component to pull in the parameters for your operation and execute it. Again, you could achieve this with useLazyQuery so it's really up to you and your team how you want to approach this problem. To avoid learning 2 ways, though, I recommend picking just one path. Conclusion Apollo Client's fetch policies are a versatile and helpful tool for managing your application data and keeping it in sync with your GraphQL server. In general, you should use the defaults provided by the library, but think about the user experience you want to provide. This will help you determine which policy best meets your needs. Leveraging tools like fragments will enable you to manage your application and use composable patterns more effectively. With the rise of React Server Components and other similar patterns, you'll need to be wary of how that impacts your Apollo Client strategy. However, if you're on a legacy application that leverages traditional SSR patterns, Apollo allows you to pre-render queries on the server and their related cache. When you combine these technologies, you'll find that your apps perform great, and your users will be delighted....

May 17, 2024

7 mins

GraphQL

What’s New with Astro in 2024 with Matthew Phillips, CTO of Astro

In the latest episode of the Modern Web Podcast, Tracy Lee, Adam Rackis, Ben Lesh, and guest Matthew Phillips explore the concept of "Islands" in web development using Astro. They discuss how Astro allows developers to create self-contained interactive elements that enhance the user experience. One of the standout features of Astro is its framework-agnostic approach, which enables seamless integration of components from different frameworks like React or Vue. This flexibility allows developers to leverage the best features of each framework without being tied down to a single technology stack. The conversation covers the technical aspects of Astro, including client directives that enable selective rendering of components based on conditions like viewport visibility. This capability ensures that only the necessary components are loaded, improving performance and reducing unnecessary resource consumption. Matthew also touches on the challenges of collecting metrics and the importance of type safety in software development. These considerations highlight the attention to detail and focus on optimization that Astro brings to the table. The discussion shifts to the development of server actions in Astro, emphasizing the simplified implementation of remote procedure calls (RPC). This feature allows developers to easily create server-side functionality and interact with databases. The introduction of AstroDB, a database integration tool, further enhances the capabilities of Astro. With AstroDB, developers can seamlessly connect their applications to databases, making data management and retrieval a breeze. Throughout the podcast, Matthew shares his insights on different frameworks and the need for innovation in web development. They discuss potential paradigm shifts in the industry and highlight the importance of staying up to date with cutting-edge tools. Recommendations are made to explore tools like Astro, AstroDB, Solid, and SvelteKit for those interested in the evolving web development landscape. Download this episode here....

May 17, 2024

2 mins

AstroReact

Local-First Application Development is Back with Dev Agrawal

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