When we talked about virtual dom internally, I thought it would be really cool if Blaze devs could easily take advantage of the big community of React components out there, and that would become easy if it were based on the same renderer. That way you could just NPM install some React component, include it in your Blaze project, and be good to go.
6 Likes
It would also make a good value proposition - āBlaze uses Reactā 
And Blaze lives on - LONG LIVE BLAZE!!!
1 Like
@sashko - I realize youāre talking about something else here, but I thought we could already use react in blaze
So, @miro - canāt we already say thatā¦[quote=āmiro, post:22, topic:28664ā]
āBlaze uses Reactā
[/quote]
1 Like
Oh sure - but itās not fully integrated into the virtual DOM pipeline so you donāt get the React performance boost.
1 Like
Oh man, that would be great - really.
A few months back, I determined that Blaze might not be making it - and for various reasons I spoke with my client for the main project Iām working on now and we decided for me to take a month or so off and learn react and then come back and refactor the whole project. Iām almost done with that (Actually, I think Iāll be back where I was by the end of today). And I have to say, I feel much more better for it. Learning any new JS technology typically makes you a better JS programmer, and I for sure feel like thatās the case with React.
HOWEVERā¦ if I felt like Blaze was going to have a future like it might have now that weāve made these moves back then - maybe I would have just stuck with it.
I think this will have a great impact for those whoāve learned āMeteorā and are happy with Blaze. Especially those who canāt just take a month off and pick up React. Granted, maybe I went overboard with my React training, Iād say you could probably get by with taking a week off
All and all, I feel like this is a really good thing you all have done here making blaze itās own thing.
+1 for bringing Virtual Dom to blaze - Even though I am a React developer at heart now - I was once enjoyed Blazing it up a long time ago. And from my Blazing days, I feel like there is something Blaze still has to offer the scene.
There is something about the flexibility of Blaze/Meteor/Session on one side of things and React/Redux/Meteor on the other. For example (now, this might be wrong for several reasons - but Iām bringing it up anyways) I like how I can just import Session on the server where I have a method to insert some data into the databaseā¦ And if I find that the user is not logged in - I set a Session variable which in turn triggers a āloginā modal screen to request my user to login (I throw an error also right after that Session.set). I agree, that I should be checking for this on the client side - and I actually am. I just like the fact that with Session - I CAN do this from the server. And my component watching that Session variable still gets āre-renderedā because of the createContainer context - so, in effect - itās kind of like redux, I know itās not the same for a lot of reasons - but this way just seams simpler to me for now. And thatās what I mean - I like how with Blaze/Meteor you can just ādoā what you want to do sometimes, yes I like the structure of React, itās made me a better developer. But sometimes, freedom feels good, and getās the job done.
2 Likes
Agreed ā¦
What we are looking at right now is implementing Incremental DOM https://github.com/meteor/blaze/issues/45, which in theory, could be done rather quickly and produce great results. I have seen benchmarks where Virtual DOM didnāt provide that much improvement for large pages on weaker devices (due namely to the doubling of memory, you hold the page, as it seems, twice in memory)
5 Likes
gfmdkhtdhltflhtfljtā:moneybag:
2 Likes
THE PROPHECY HAS BEEN RESTORED
needlowercasechars
3 Likes
I feel you man - Iām a pretty big Blaze fan myself, and Iām glad someone is taking it to the future.
5 Likes
When did we get Session on the server? Or am I misreading you? Somehow youāre linking Session with server. Are you saying you can pass flexible global state (Session) from the client to the server ā and you enjoy that? And if true are you then suggesting you have limitations on what you can pass to the server with the React framework?
Are you suggesting, in theory, with Blaze implementing āIncremental DOMā it will be faster (less processing) than React?
Yes, I am suggesting that
Once we implement it, weāll know for sure.
3 Likes
Oh my gosh, I realize on the second read, that was HORRIBLY writtenā¦ You understood me, but I almost didnāt understand MYSELF after reading that a second time. For clarity.
Way back when my client and I decided to switch to React for this project, if we had felt like Blaze had a stable futureā¦ Maybe not as stable as React, but at least felt like we had some kind of support or future (like we do now that itās becoming a community project and could live on) - then, maybe we would have stuck with Blaze.
I think this breathes life back into something that I think is valuable to hang on to.
I feel embarrassed nowā¦ And I recognize that perhaps this is only actually working in practice because Iām importing the method, and I guess this check is actually happening on the client sideā¦ Funny, I never got an error about this in the console - It seams to be working just fine - heh.
So, yes - I am saying that I put a Session.set() in my method - Hereās the gist to see what Iām doing. I guess youāre right, this is possibly bad design.
Wellā¦ Long Live Bad Design!!! Wait, I meanā¦ Blaze!!! (So yeah, Blaze never encouraged me to do this, I came up with this stupid idea all on my own)
Thanks @aadams
3 Likes
I have to say, Iāve been very impressed with the level of activity on the Blaze repo since it was āofficiallyā opened to contributions just recently.
These are still early days, but so far, many thanks in particular to @sashko, @mitar, @miro, and @ramez for their efforts.
Letās keep the momentum going. Everyone, if you have the time and are passionate about Blaze, find a way to contribute!
7 Likes
I still havenāt been able to get an invite to the slack channel. Would love to get that figured out so I can participate in the day to day conversation.
So great, looking forward to blaze in my non-meteor projects!
2 Likes
Yeah, it just says invite_limit_reached 