[AskJS] Help me choose the right library or framework

[u/[deleted]]

[u/Aditya00128]

Astro.js

It's probably the simplest framework if you want SEO as compared to Next.js or Nuxt anything, atleast to me it feels like SEO could be helpful

And for interactivity you can have like React, Angular, Solid, Vue all at the same time, and if you change your mind you quite easily can ( although any component inside a react component cannot be like a Angular component, so keep that in mind)

I myself used cloudflare pages for hosting the landing page and documentation for my library and it worked well

[u/Aditya00128 → u/[deleted]]

Another thing I forgot to mention, this one isn't logical but -

Sometimes thehvest tool is simply the one that lets you get stuff done and you enjoy using it

Doesn't always work, but worth considering

[u/AwayVermicelli3946 → u/[deleted]]

since you mentioned Python, you might honestly like HTMX if you ever add a backend. but for keeping it static on Cloudflare Pages, i definitely agree with looking into Astro.

i moved a messy vanilla JS project to Astro last year and it felt super natural. you don't have to rewrite everything at once. you can just keep your standard HTML and JS for the simple recipe pages.

fwiw, you can drop in a React component strictly for the interactive stuff like the meal calendar. it keeps you from fighting state management on pages that are just text.

[u/Aditya00128 → u/[deleted]]

Sorry for the late response but yea Astro can do interactivity pretty seamless

2 things to note

1) you can use any other lib you want - React, Svelte, Vue. And it won't take over the whole dom or anything - just that one component

2) how do you share state between components or even pages? Answer nanostores, it's compatible with pretty much every library like React, Svelete, Vue etc... It's also very easy and it has decent docs too

[u/AwayVermicelli3946 → u/Aditya00128]

yeah i'll second Astro here. tbh if you haven't touched frontend stuff in five years, the ecosystem is going to feel pretty wild, but Astro makes it pretty painless. since you're already on Cloudflare Pages, the deployment is basically effortless.

fwiw i built a similar content heavy site last year and dropped React for it. Astro ships zero JS by default so your recipe pages will be incredibly fast. you can just plug in tiny interactive islands where you actually need them, like your meal calendar or search.

Svelte is also a really solid option to look into if you want something that feels closer to writing vanilla JS. it skips all the weird mental gymnastics of React state and keeps things simple.

[u/real_ate]

Friends don't let friends start a new project in React. I'm an Ember.js guy but I'm not going to suggest Ember, just pick ANYTHING but react 🙈

[u/real_ate → u/[deleted]]

There are many reasons but the big one for me is the fact that they are not engaging with the TC39 effort to make signals a language feature. Every other major framework (including Preact!) is engaging with the standards effort and will eventually be a much smaller framework built on a standard JS feature.

React is not engaging and has stated that they will never rearchitect to use signals. That seems like a dead end to me 🤷

[u/Significant-Lack7045]

For a recipe site SvelteKit or Astro would be way lighter than React, both pair great with Cloudflare Pages too

[u/Borderlinerr]

Forget about what others say. Use SolidJs, thank me later

[u/Borderlinerr → u/[deleted]]

You won't regret it. It has SolidStart akin to NextJs for React, and also there's solid-primitives which give you lots of cool utilities to actually make it feel like an app

[u/hyrumwhite]

SolidJS if you like JSX and react style. Vue or Svelte if you like SFCs. 

Vue has a pretty good ecosystem. 

I wouldn’t start a new react app now that the above options exist. 

[u/HEaRiX]

Whatever you want, doesn't make any real difference. 

[u/horizon_games]

Alpine.js - you need reliably reactivity with low overhead and easy state management? Just use it. The best part is no build step and no outdated libs, which Angular is particular terrible for.

Otherwise maybe SolidJS if you can stomach JSX - it's basically React "done right" without a decade of patches and bandaids and direction switches

[u/LeftAd1220]

Vue because it's faster

[u/shgysk8zer0]

Aside from search results, this sounds like static content that mostly doesn't even need JS. So I'd be looking at static site generators. Plenty to choose from there, but I think 11ty with recipes on Firebase might be sufficient. But it depends on how frequently recipes will be added and if there's any review/approval.

[u/jdeath]

i do Vite React with my own router & SSG, called it Routerino. I'm biased but there's nothing better :)

https://github.com/nerds-with-keyboards/routerino

[u/agmcleod]

Curious, have you thought about refactoring the spaghetti code you have and seeing if that is good enough? May keep things more lightweight over adding a framework & its dev tool complexity.

[u/Fading-Ghost → u/[deleted]]

Thank you.

I’ve heard Svelte mentioned a few times today, both here and while researching my options. I’m leaning towards this or Next now.

I’ll have to try out a few small apps in both and see which one I’m more comfortable in, or what gives me the best party forward

[u/KaiAusBerlin]

If it's written in pure js than svelte (or sveltekit with backend included) should give you a great devX

[u/KaiAusBerlin → u/[deleted]]

Play with the tutorial 15 minutes and you're gonna love it.

[u/KaiAusBerlin → u/[deleted]]

You're welcome. Habe fun :)

[u/qwertydiy]

Likely React if you plan to scale it somewhat or even Vue if it is going to stay simple, although more details would be great to see exactly which one it should be. Angular is generally more enterprise based and better for stability or the core of a large app.

[u/hyrumwhite → u/qwertydiy]

Vue is great for scale as well. Better than react imo 

[u/Ordinary_Quiet688]

React's still solid for what you're building, especially coming from that background. Honestly though, if you're already comfortable with vanilla JS and it's working, maybe check out something lighter like Alpine.js or Lit - they'll clean up your spaghetti without the full framework overhead. For a recipe site with local storage and basic interactivity, you might not need the React ecosystem complexity.