This blog was originally written here 👈🏼
simple answers are for the suckers...
Is what I kept saying to myself while building out a ..totally unnecessary tool I would use to do this groundbreaking new form of communication... Blogging!! ..hmm what's that? dev.to?? never heard of em.
For why?
I wanted to… explore something I was wholly unfamiliar with and thought what better way to accomplish that than building a bespoke blogging tool for myself and write about the whole experience using that tool. A win win for the reader and me. They get spicy content , I get “solutions” to every “mistake” I make in my DMs.
…everyone learns!
The 3 Amigos
Tauri - The spicy Electron competitor that allows me to build this program in almost any FE framework I want strapped with a Rust backend, capable of producing lightweight fully compatible versions for all OSs …even those who have a strange fascination with penguins.
Slate.js - A React based framework for building a rich text editor that lets me cherry pick whatever features I want packaged together in reusable components. …Like a digital Lego set but for writing
Supabase - An open source database …and much much more provider capable of storing all the 1s and 0s responsible for what you’re reading now, and giving me an easy way to go an get them.
What did we learn?
That with the power of the almighty Webview via WRY and TAO
These libraries have been absorbed in one fashion or another into the main Tauri repo.
my Tauri app beats the breaks off of a similar app built on electron …in theory when it comes to just about every countable metric. …I counted at least to 6
hold on I have to break out my magnifying glass 🔎
The energy it took your brain to read this sentence cost more than this app running at full tilt.
Almost forgot to give everyone their grain of 🧂, I am flying by stuff at a million miles an hour and leaking details like a sieve as always do your own research.
Locking it down
I get to yank out all of the node.env === development{ let me have ALL of the spicy DB commands }
bs out of the blogs repo and shove all of the API logic centered around posting to the DB into the apps repo.
Next.js does a great job hiding variables but good luck untangling the Rust compiled spaghetti binary and for those that can …Gather round everyone, on the count of three..
Eventually I will add the ability to delete posts from the app truly isolating all of the spicy variables and API calls from {bigShadyTechCompany.name} who got pissed at me when I showed everyone that you …yes you can bend time using 11ty and have not stopped since trying to obtain the keys to my demise. …but in the mean time SEO score go BrtTtTtTtTt
but what about editing!?!
I dont make mistcakes, moving on.
If it fits it ships
I was able to cram my Slate.js instance wholesale into my app and like the 10th anniversary edition of Skyrim …yup a decade running all the mods…
but Zach! that would totally not work, what kind of scam are you trying to pull?
This should be the part where I commend you on your observation skills and agree with you fully but the reality of it is after some minor route futzing wouldn’t you know it that S.O.B compiled. …I was as surprised as everyone else.
…Breaking News! Reading documentation actually works!
Now that only gets us halfway to the finish line and it is time to see if Supabase would play nice with the other two. I essentially took what I had refactored it to React and to make a short story even shorter it fit..
This speaks to Supabases excellent DX and Tauris ability to turn most FE ingredients into a meal fit for any computers palate. …Blog Bourgogne!
Bring it home
While building this one out I was ready to have heroic stories of fighting my way out of a stack trace a million lines deep using nothing but CLI prompts, the reality …all be it a much more boring one IMO was a pretty linear process of build, break and repeat until I was done.
In the end I am left with a clean, easy and safe way to get my message out to the masses …all hail hypno-blogger and learned a bunch along the way.
Woo that was a lot of words glad ya made it down here, thanks for hanging out 👋🏼
Housekeeping
Could this have been all handled by a simple ‘npm run dev’ ?
Duh.
Should someone follow this path?
Maybe not this exact one but take the deeper meaning of it all and run with that.
What was the point of all this?
Telling a story helps me learn better and technical think pieces tend to be boring af.
What’s happening with the ole Zacharyp.dev 11ty swap??
Chill out…
Do you have a Twitter?
Kinda off topic don’t ya think… but I do
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