Do you have a recommended Javascript framework or library for front-end development?
Specifically, I’m looking to update various fields (charts, numerical displays) using a custom Experience similiar to how the dashboard operates by updating fields in the background on a timer.
There are quite a few popular options out there (Angular, React, Vue, Ember, Backbone, Mustache, etc etc). I’m pretty open to suggestion here; I realize that these libraries aren’t exact alternatives to each other.
Does Losant recommend any particuular front-end framework for integration with a back-end Experience?
Have Losant users had good experiences with any front-end framework in particular?
Losant uses React.js to power the user interface at app.losant.com. I won’t call that an official endorsement, but we are very happy with React: it’s powerful yet efficient; it’s constantly being improved; and it has a great community of open source contributors.
That said, React - as well as Angular, Vue, Ember, and the other single-page application frameworks - are not for beginner web developers. We see a lot of our users building their application experiences as traditional request-response applications, where the HTML that makes up a page is rendered on the server and returned to the user over the network connection. In that case, they handle any light interaction within the browser using jQuery.
If you do want to use a single-page application framework to build your application experience, you’ll need to either host the front-end files elsewhere or tweak your build / deployment process to push your work up to Losant whenever you publish changes. The Losant CLI is a valuable tool if you go that route.
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@Dylan_Schuster
When you want to push changes from a framework back to Losant via the CLI, the files all need to be in .hbs handlebars format?
Thanks Dylan.
I went with your suggestion (vanilla Javascript updates, no framework). We are having good results doing it this way so far.
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