What do you think?
Rate this book
Server-Driven Web Apps with htmx: Any Language, Less Code, Simpler Code
186 pages, Paperback
Published September 17, 2024
3 people are currently reading
9 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
February 27, 2025
This book was decent, but I think the title is somewhat misleading and not representative. The book does cover HTMX, but of the 8 chapters, really only about 3 are for HTMX. There arew whole other chapters on other libraries or techniques. Some are covering things that are hard(er) to do in HTMX, but some are just totally separate web development topics (like security). So, it feels a bit more like the author wanted to do a general web development book, with HTMX being the main API handling tech, but also covering other things needed.
The coverage of HTMX itself is good. But, my #1 issue is around lack of content or explanation regarding how HTMX is different from say using React or Nuxt or Next or other front end web app tech. HTMX is really almost purely about handling API interaction and/or dynamic behavior where (usually) an API/server calls are involved. It does nothing for general web site creation, so it's really not something you can use alone for building web apps. Even if your site does not have login or similar things, you would still likely want a layout system, re-usable components (nav bar, etc.) and so on. HTMX is not for that, although could actually be used to do some of that (but I doubt would be an ideal use case). So, I'd have liked to see a bit more discussion around mixing it with other things since this book is technically about "web apps." Given all the other chapters on things often almost totally independent of HTMX, I'd have loved to see a chapter on integrating HTMX with say a couple of common web app/site building things. Maybe one of the static site generators (Hugo, Jekyll, etc.), maybe an Astro or Nuxt, and then something more heavy like React or Sveltekit, etc. - or explanation/commentary on why you wouldn't use it with one of those.
Lastly, there's a fair bit of duplication (seems like copy-paste). In some cases this is so the chapter can stand on its own, but it felt overly obvious in most cases. This was for things like setting up a project, or more specifically telling you to add a fancy icon to spice things up (the exact same statements about adding a trashcan icon for deletes was there in I think at least 3 places).
The coverage of HTMX itself is good. But, my #1 issue is around lack of content or explanation regarding how HTMX is different from say using React or Nuxt or Next or other front end web app tech. HTMX is really almost purely about handling API interaction and/or dynamic behavior where (usually) an API/server calls are involved. It does nothing for general web site creation, so it's really not something you can use alone for building web apps. Even if your site does not have login or similar things, you would still likely want a layout system, re-usable components (nav bar, etc.) and so on. HTMX is not for that, although could actually be used to do some of that (but I doubt would be an ideal use case). So, I'd have liked to see a bit more discussion around mixing it with other things since this book is technically about "web apps." Given all the other chapters on things often almost totally independent of HTMX, I'd have loved to see a chapter on integrating HTMX with say a couple of common web app/site building things. Maybe one of the static site generators (Hugo, Jekyll, etc.), maybe an Astro or Nuxt, and then something more heavy like React or Sveltekit, etc. - or explanation/commentary on why you wouldn't use it with one of those.
Lastly, there's a fair bit of duplication (seems like copy-paste). In some cases this is so the chapter can stand on its own, but it felt overly obvious in most cases. This was for things like setting up a project, or more specifically telling you to add a fancy icon to spice things up (the exact same statements about adding a trashcan icon for deletes was there in I think at least 3 places).
March 6, 2025
Nice intro to htmx using a typescript backend. Numerous chapters on considerations and patterns. Goes into related tech that you might want to use. Sample application that was build in the beginning wasn't in-depth enough to really use to fully explore htmx.
March 10, 2025
A basic introduction to htmx, but does not include much production-ready code. Doesn't explain how to do the variableand CSS scoping that vue offers, for example, nor how to save state correctly on the server end of things.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews