Chapter 8: Best Practices

This chapter will discuss some best practices for working with Reken. Following these guidelines will help you build efficient and maintainable web applications while leveraging Reken's capabilities.

8.1 Structuring Your Reken-Based Projects

When working on a project that uses Reken, it's essential to have a well-structured project setup. This ensures that your code is organized and easy to manage. Here are some best practices for structuring your Reken-based projects:

Separation of Concerns: Divide your project into logical sections, such as HTML templates, styles, and JavaScript.

For simple Reken projects that involve HTML First Single Page Applications (SPA), the most efficient way is to store all the styling, and javascript in one HTML file. Besides optional third-party.js files, the only external dependency would be the Reken library. The HTML file is organized as follows.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">

 <head>
  <title>Page Title</title>
  <style>
   /* Style definitions */
  </style>
 </head>

 <body>
  <!-- html -->
 </body>

 <template data-component='a-component'>
  <!-- Optional component definitions -->
 </template>
...

 <script>
 // Optional js variable declrations, functions and eventhandlers
 </script>

 <script src="js/thirdpartylibs.js"></script>
 <script src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/gh/hbroek/reken/dist/reken.min.js"></script>

</html>

When you have a more complex website with multiple HTML pages that share resources such as styling, js files, and components, an HTML file layout would look as follows.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">

 <head>
  <title>Page Title</title>
  <link rel="stylesheet" href="css/stylesheet.css">
 </head>

 <body>
  <!-- html -->
 </body>

 <div data-include="comps/components.html"></div>
 <script src="js/app.js"></script>

 <script src="js/thirdpartylibs.js"></script>
 <script src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/gh/hbroek/reken/dist/reken.min.js"></script>

</html>

In this example, we reference an external stylesheet stylesheet.css in the css folder for the style definitions shared between the HTML pages.

It also includes the components.html file in the comps subfolder, which contains the definition of components shared across the project.

The app.js with the application code, and thirdpartylibs.js, with the third party code, are loaded from the js subfolder.

Finally, we load the reken library from the CDN, or can be hosted in the js folder.

Modular Components: Create reusable components for your UI elements. Use the data-component attribute to define and use components within your project. Component reuse can help your project in multiple ways.

Creating a Reken-based data-component component for repeating content, such as a button, can ensure consistency within the page.

The same applies to reusing components across different HTML files in the project by loading them with data-include.

The third and best advantage of component reuse is the creation of a component library that can be used by different projects and can even be shared with others.

File Organization: Maintain a consistent file organization. Place components in their folders, group styles together, and structure your project to make it easy to locate specific files. As discussed earlier, when creating a more complex project with multiple HTML pages, it is a good idea to share resources by storing them in files external from the HTML file.

- index.html
- other-html-files.html
- js
  - app.js
  - thirdpartylibs.js
  - reken.js
- css
  - stylesheet.css
- comps
  - components.html
-img
  - image1.jpg
  - image2.png
  - ...

Version Control: Use version control systems like Git to keep track of changes in your project. This helps collaborate and allows you to roll back to previous versions if needed.

8.2 Optimizing for Performance

Performance is a critical aspect of web development. While Reken simplifies dynamic web page creation, ensuring that your application runs efficiently is essential. Here are some performance optimization tips:

8.2.1 Minimize DOM Updates

Reken updates the DOM efficiently, but excessive updates can impact performance. Avoid unnecessary changes to the DOM, and update only when needed.

Underneath the cover, Reken optimizes updates by first checking whether the DOM actually needs to be updated, and will only do so when the DOM really cahnges. Instead of hiding UI using styles or classes, use data-if or data-route to hide UI elements. Besides hiding the UI, it also stops executing the model to update the UI in these hidden (and thus deactivated) HTML branches.

  <main data-route="page1">
    ...
  </main>
  <main data-route="page2">
    ...
  </main>
  <main data-route="page3">
    ...
  </main>
  <main data-route="page4">
    ...
  </main>

In this SPA example, only the active's route HTML element of the active route is displayed and executed. With these four pages only 1 page is visible, and its UI gets updated by the model.

8.2.2 Caching

Cache data retrieved from REST APIs to reduce redundant network requests. This can significantly improve load times. Using the HTTP 304 response codes and cache-control headers can limit unnecessary network calls.

8.2.3 Lazy Loading

Implement lazy loading for resources like images or components not immediately needed on the page. This reduces initial page load times. With the use of data-if and data-route, the sections of HTML that are not visible do not need to load images, unfortunately, the browser will still load these images, unless you add a property loading="lazy" to each img element and hide the body element on startup and only after Reken is initialized, show it.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<script>
 let show = false;
</script>
<body style="display:none" data-on-rekenready="e.target.style.display='initial'">

 <button data-action="show=true">Show image</button>
 <main data-if="show">
  <img loading="lazy" src="photos/10010.jpg"/>
 </main>

</body>
<script src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/gh/hbroek/reken/dist/reken.min.js"></script>
</html>

In this example, we set the attribute loading="lazy" on the img element. The img is part of an HTML branch of the main element with a data-if attribute.

Upon initialization we also need to hide the body element for Reken to get a chance to hide the main element. Once that is done, after the event rekenready is fired, we can reset the body to its initial value, which will make it visible.

The image will only load when the user clicks the "Show" button.

A similar approach can be prevent rest calls from executing, by hiding them with a data-if or a data-route tag.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<script>
 let load = false;
 let list
</script>
<body style="display:none" data-on-rekenready="e.target.style.display='initial'">

 <button data-action="load=true">Load json</button>
 <main data-if="load">
  <ol data-rest="list:json/employees.json" data-if="list" data-for="employee:list">
   <li data-text="${employee.item.name}"></li>
  </ol>
 </main>

</body>
<script src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/gh/hbroek/reken/dist/reken.min.js"></script>
</html>

In this example we activate the main element only when the load variable is true. As a result the result call will not execute until that happens. There is a data-if to ensure that the data-for is not executed until the employees are loaded in the list variable. Once that happens, the list of Employees is rendered.

8.2.4 Minify and Bundle

Minify your HTML, JavaScript, and CSS files to reduce file sizes. There are two ways to make your HTML and CSS files smaller: minify and compression. In addition, your Javascript files have another option to make them smaller, which is uglify, where variable and function names are renamed to shorter symbols, which has that added benefit of obfuscation.

Use bundling tools to combine multiple files into one, reducing the number of requests. Strategies here are to merge all the stylesheet, javascript, and component files into the main HTML file, similar to the SPA files described in section 8.1. Currently, there are no Reken-specific tools that automate this.

8.2.5 Optimize Images

Compress and optimize images to reduce their file size without sacrificing quality. This is crucial for faster page loading. Besides having the images set to the closest resolution they are being shown in the browser, there are also optimizer tools to remove metadata and other optimizations to make the images smaller.

8.3 Debugging and Troubleshooting

Debugging and troubleshooting are integral parts of the development process. Reken provides tools and techniques to facilitate this process. Here's how to effectively debug and troubleshoot Reken-based project, when a page does not or partially render.

8.3.1 Validate your HTML

Use your editor's HTML formatting tools to check your HTML's validity. Double-check that all HTML opening tags have closing tags and that all attribute quotes have closing quotes.

Note The browser sometimes adds tags to the HTML to make it valid. For example, typically, a tbody tag is added between the table and tr tags. This can trip you up when you add a data-for attribute on the table element, which should be on the tbody element.

8.3.2 Browser Developer Tools

Use your browser's developer tools to inspect the DOM, examine network requests, and debug JavaScript code. You can set breakpoints and step through your code for debugging.

8.3.3. Logging

Implement logging in your Reken-based code to track the flow of your application and identify issues. Use console.log() statements to output messages to the browser console.

8.3.4 Error Handling

Properly handle errors in your JavaScript code. Use try...catch blocks to catch and manage exceptions. This prevents unhandled errors from breaking your application.

8.3.5 Testing

Write tests for your Reken components and functions. Automated tests help identify issues early in the development process.

8.3.6 Community Support

Take advantage of the Reken community for assistance. Many developers share their experiences and solutions to common issues in online forums and documentation.

Use the Reken GitHub Discussions if you have questions, want to share ideas, or have open-ended conversations about the project. Use Reken GitHub discussions for the following topics:

Usage and Implementation: If you have questions about how to use a particular feature of the product or how to implement it in your projects.
Feature Requests: You can discuss potential new features or improvements to the product.
General Queries: For broader questions about the product, such as its roadmap, compatibility with other tools, or best practices.
Community Support: It's a great place to get help from the community, engage with other users, and share your own experiences or solutions.

However, it's important to note that Reken GitHub Discussions is not the ideal place for:

Reporting Bugs: These are usually better reported in the Issues section, where they can be tracked and resolved systematically.
Filing Enhancement requests: These are also better reported in the Issues section as a Feature Request so that they, like bugs, can be tracked and resolved systematically.
Confidential or Sensitive Questions: Public discussions are visible to everyone, so it's not suitable for questions that involve sensitive or proprietary information.

8.3.7 Summary

By following these best practices, you can structure your Reken-based projects effectively, optimize their performance, and efficiently debug and troubleshoot any issues that may arise during development.