Laravel Livewire as a Daily use Frontend Framework
Laravel Livewire can be a Great choice and a very good alternative for Frameworks like Vue Js, React etc but at it's own cost. By the way Keeping in mind it's Less Learning Curve it could be a good Option for Beginners. And on the other hand it can only be used with PHP Laravel Framework.
What is Laravel Livewire ?
Laravel Livewire is a Frontend Framework for Laravel Web Applications which claims to be a Full Stack Frontend Framework. Let's find out how good is it and can we use it as a daily to use Frontend Framework and can it Replace Frameworks like Angular, React, Vue Svelte etc.
Learning Curve
Laravel Livewire has a negligible Learning Curve if you know any JavaScript Frameworks or even have knowledge of Vanilla JavaScript or jQuery for rest of the work you can use plain HTML inside Livewire Components. Means if you do or don't need JavaScript within any given component of your App you can execute that with ease without learning anything new. Livewire comes with many usefull built-in features like Own Validations, Realtime Validations, Actions, Event Handlers and that too without any external JavaScript just using Livewire notations.
Top Features
I am writing a Few Features that I like the most about Livewire as a Developer there are other very great features which you can explore in it.
Actions :
The goal of actions in Livewire is to be able to easily listen to page interactions, and call a method on your Livewire component (re-rendering the component).
When we install Livewire in our Laravel Project we get a Set of Artisan Commands using which we can create Components and do many other things. Let's take the basic one i.e. Generating New Components, which is very easy with Livewire you just need to type an artisan command in your terminal like
php artisan make:livewire MyComponent
Events :
Livewire comes with inbuilt event handler which have a very Elegant Notation too, where just have to write "wire:click" where wire justifies Livewire and click justifies an OnClick event. These notations are same as Alpine Js notations or out of which many are Vanilla JavaScript notations. Which is so cool eith not learning curve at all.
Validations :
Livewire Validations are the things which make it more elegant like they offer Realtime Validations without external JavaScript using their prebuilt notations where we can write our Validation Logic inside the Component Class (Your Livewire Component's Dedicated Controller) and see them working in Real-time Asynchronously. Write logic in PHP and it works like javascript asynchronously. Which is just another Great thing.
Polling :
Polling is a very Good Feature which I think feels very elegant when we talk about making asynchronous components. In polling we can define a refresh time with our component using which our component automatically refreshes itself which is yet another great features unlike Vue Js where Polling is working everytime consuming resources and sometimes may lead to app crashes, but as Livewire is here there is not need to worry about that.
Pros :
- Negligible Learning Curve
- Can be used without knowing JavaScript
- Elegant Code Splitting
- Easy to Embed Components and Notations
- Great Event Handling
- Elegant Actions
- Refresh Control using Polling
Cons :
- No Frontend Component Routing
- Can Only be used with PHP Laravel Framework
- Less Powerful than React or Vue
- Less Preferred by masses
Conclusion :
Finally I can say that if you are a Dedicated Laravel Developer or User you can definitely use Livewire as a Daily use Frontend Framework keeping in mind it's ease of use and Elegance. But if you work with multiple Backend or Rest Frameworks you should definitely learn JavaScript Frontend Frameworks like Angular, React, Vue, Svelte either all or either master one of them.
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