Frontends
Edit on GitHubPrimate isn't tied to any specific frontend framework. The core platform comes
along with a view handler that serves html files from the
components directory. Additionally there are officially supported modules
that cover many frontend frameworks. When loaded, they extend the view
handler to support more file extensions.
Those frameworks come with different capabilities, like server-side rendering (SSR), hydration and SPA support. In some cases, some capabilities have simply not been implemented yet in the module. In other cases, the frontend framework itself doesn't support those.
Layouts
Svelte, React and Solid currently support recursive layouting in Primate.
Server-side rendering (SSR)
This refers to the frontend framework compiling its files on the server and sending prerendered HTML pages to the client. It avoids having the client itself do the first rendering, which would otherwise cause a delay in the time taken for a first contentful paint by the browser.
All official frontend modules aside from HTMX support SSR. HTMX itself has no support for SSR.
Hydration
Once a complete prerendered page has been sent to client, it is often necessary to kick off the frontend framework on the client so it can register events and manage the page. This is known as hydration.
Currently the Svelte, React and Solid modules support hydration, while work on Vue hydration is planned for future versions.
HTMX, having no SSR support, also has no support for hydration. The HTMX client is always sent along the page and activates on page load.
SPA
For modules that support it (currently Svelte, React and Solid), SPA browsing
is active by default. It injects a small JavaScript client into the build which
uses fetch to manage clicking on links and submitting forms instead of
reloading the entire page, and also manages browsing the history.
Head component
If you need to manipulate the <head> part from within an individual
component, use <svelte:head> for Svelte. For React and Solid, you can use the
Head export of @primate/frontend/react and @primate/frontend/solid for
the same behavior.
Support matrix
Every frontend framework registers its own file extension with the
view handler and needs to be loaded in primate.config.js. You can
use different frontend frameworks alongside each other, in different routes.
| Framework | Extension | Layouts | SSR | Hydration | SPA | Head | I18N |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| HTML | .html |
✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Svelte | .svelte |
✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| React | .jsx |
✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Solid | .jsx |
✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Vue | .vue |
✗ | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Angular | .component.ts |
✗ | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| HTMX | .htmx |
✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Handlebars | .hbs |
✗ | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Marko | .marko |
✗ | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
Error list
Missing Dependencies
A frontend module was loaded in the configuration for which dependencies are missing.
Install the dependency according to the instructions in the error message.
The frontend module only provides wrappers for frontend frameworks. The actual package needs to be installed by the user. Primate will inform you which dependency is missing and what command you need to issue to install it.