Feels like the author misses the point of an SPA. If you have website where every "view" is a /page/a etc., SPA might not be the best choice. But in an SPA i can be dynamic, and trigger data retrieval/sending without route changes.
A very basic example is if I have a checkbox that allows the user to subscribe to push notifications. On click I sent a xhr request to the backend POST `/subscribe/1234` which registers the subscription. Next time I'll check `/subscriptions` or similar to see if the checbbox is in "checked" state (i.e. we are subscribed). This is basic functionality which requires a concise REST/JSON API, and has nothing todo with your page/route layout à la /page/a, /page/b etc.
We do this for SPA. The POST can be supported just like you explained. Then you can either reload the "page" to see that the checkbox is checked, because backend will include that as part of the page, or (as an optimization) reload just that checkbox if you created a specialized resource for it. The entire page is still there for you to fetch upon transitions.
Among pages, you will still need a few individualized resources sprinkled around for optimizations/reloads/fragment-paginations. The difference between that and a complete API is that they will be entirely design driven. If a table needs paginating, and is built with data from multiple resources, you will not provide 2 resources, and expect front-end to paginate and glue them together. Instead, you provide a complete paginated resource for this table, where data is ready to be displayed as-is.
As a user, I can think if a couple of reason immediately:
- I don't like page (re)loads. They are usually slower and more likely to fail, compared to a lightweight request. Especially in scenarios with a bad connection
- If they fail, it's harder to retry, I see a connection timeout page. With a SPA I see an error message, potentially with a retry button. Or even better: the SPA retries for me a few times.
- I can continue to see all the rest of the page while the action is running
- I can potentially start other actions in parallel
- I prefer to not lose any progress of things on the side, e.g. text-boxes where I already entered/changed some text
- It's easier to inspect what goes wrong by looking at the network tab. Okay, most users don't do that, but for me it's still a pro
There are also advantages, but I think nowadays the cons outweight those for me.
Yeah, sorry, but I just don't agree with the spirit of the comment, and I think it's thinking like this which leads programmers to over-engineer web applications, which usually harms user experience and wastes company money.
Absolutist statements like "no, you should not do a full form post just to toggle a checkbox" are just silly. There is no minimum bound beneath which a standard web browser form submission doesn't make sense, and writing extra JavaScript code to not only manage an asynchronous network request but also handle subsequent behaviours for success, failure, timeout, etc., is additional complexity which incurs additional cost and a greater potential for system failure.
Sometimes these implementation details and associated costs are necessary, but in most cases they aren't, and it's not an ideal perspective economically to default to the more expensive and complex implementation, especially for dubious benefit.
Ok. I don't see it that way. Most SPAs on the internet should never have been SPAs and it's usually poor judgement which leads a project in that direction. That poor judgement includes things like the characterisation of full page reloads as overly cumbersome and asynchronous requests as being lightweight. It also includes the expensive decision to try to reimplement the native browser behaviour that you get for free, as the commenter alluded to by suggesting asynchronous requests can be programmed to show a custom UI for error messages and use custom behaviour for retries of failed requests.
I believe I have indeed taken the time to understand what people are saying in these comments specifically and on this topic more broadly. And I just don't agree with the opinions presented. I think they're silly, in the same way that microservices are almost always adopted for silly reasons. The popularity of either approach doesn't negate their silliness.
> Absolutist statements like "no, you should not do a full form post just to toggle a checkbox" are just silly
That is because you didn't read or accept the frame that I set initially. I was very clearly refering to web apps that are SPAs (not websites!). Within that context, that statement is less absolutist and still true in 95% of the cases.
Very sceptic that RoR can obtain/interact with the browser push notification API as I stated in my example. You'd have to come up with glue JS code yourself, and that is where it gets messy. Pushnotifications just being one of many APIs that are client-only (and again please, if you don't need to interface with those APIs, then you might not need an SPA in the first place).
Just because "remote forms" have forms in their name it doesn't mean that they are conceptually the same thing. They are not, so obviously they can achieve those things, but they are built with js.
Having form elements automatically update the back end is extremely annoying UI imo. There's usually no indication that it's actually doing that, and if there is I generally don't trust it.
A very basic example is if I have a checkbox that allows the user to subscribe to push notifications. On click I sent a xhr request to the backend POST `/subscribe/1234` which registers the subscription. Next time I'll check `/subscriptions` or similar to see if the checbbox is in "checked" state (i.e. we are subscribed). This is basic functionality which requires a concise REST/JSON API, and has nothing todo with your page/route layout à la /page/a, /page/b etc.