HACKER Q&A
📣 nzach

Best front end framework for a back end engineer?


I'm working in a side project and now I'm getting to the point where I need some sort of interface that doesn't includes 'curl' and 'jq'.

I do have some experience with Angular 2+ but I think it is too much for what I need right now. Besides that I'll probably end up trowing away this first version anyways.

Right now all I need is some way to fetch data from an API and display these items to the user interact with.

Given that what do you think is the easiest way to create a web interface for a simple API? The API is written in Golang.


  👤 silb Accepted Answer ✓
One step up from 'curl' and 'jq' is to only target modern browsers supporting Javascript ES6.

Just create a static HTML file and a script loaded as an ES6 module.

Use the Fetch API for obtaining data from your API. Obtain DOM elements using 'document.querySelector()'. Update the DOM using Javascript template literals (strings) and the 'Element.innerHTML' attribute.

For forms, just do a server side redirect after POST or respond with HTTP 201 or 204. Alternatively, add a Javascript submit event listener to the form and do the HTTP POST using a 'FormData' object and the Fetch API.

For authorization, either a catch all HTTP Basic Auth in the web server or a HTML login form to your API responding with a session cookie and a redirect.



👤 snisarenko
I am working on a platform that might suit the problem you described

http://widgetterminal.com

Feel free to reach out directly to me if you want early access / demo (contact info in profile)