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How to ensure my web app has backward compatibility with importing JSON based user data? (lemm.ee)

submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/programming

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I am working on a small web app that stores user data locally using indexedDB which can be imported/exported by making use of JSON files. Since I plan on adding updates to the site, I want to know what best practices I should follow to make sure my app can allow importing of user data from older versions. It could be related to how I should define the properties of my user data object to make it future proof, or any library or tool I could implement that would make this migration process easier.

Do keep these points in mind:

I am using NextJS to build this application and Dexie to manage indexedDB
Without going into details, the user data file makes use of heavily nested objects and arrays and most likely won't fit in a cookie or even in the local storage API
This web app acts as a proof of concept which must only make use of the aforementioned core technologies, regardless of whether more efficient alternatives exist or not.

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (11 children)

Do you happen to do this in Ruby on Rails? I don’t know what happened but it seems like Swagger, JSON:API, and the serializers/deserializes are all abandoned.

For personal projects I use GraphQL for everything, I’m not a fan of REST these days. Let me define a schema and let clients screw around with the data. I just won’t waste the time anymore despite the performance impact everyone might cry about.

[–] expr 2 points 1 month ago (9 children)

Obligatory "JSON APIs are not REST because JSON is not hypermedia".

GraphQL is a mess too as you throw out any ability to reason about query performance and it still requires thick clients with complicated/duplicated business logic.

If you're doing RoR anyway, then go for https://htmx.org/. It's much, much simpler and closer to how the web was originally designed. Highly recommend this book the author wrote on the subject (also provides tutorials walking through building an app): https://hypermedia.systems/book/contents/.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (5 children)

I’ll give that a look, thanks!

Edit: This looks like a JavaScript library rather than a serious API standard.

[–] expr 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I don't know what you mean by an API standard, but yes, it is technically a JavaScript library. But that's only an implementation detail and the spirit of htmx is that you write very little JavaScript. Javascript is simply used to extend the HTML standard to support the full concept of hypermedia for interactive applications. An htmx-driven application embraces hypertext as the engine of application state, rather than the common thick client SPAs hitting data APIs. In such a model, clients are truly thin clients and very little logic of their own. Instead, view logic is driven by the server. It has been around for quite a long time and is very mature.

It's fundamentally different than most JavaScript libraries out there, which are focused on thick clients by and large.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I’m discussing APIs that can be consumed by others, not something for my frontend to use.

My frontend uses Hotwire — I’m not using GraphQL as some Node.js guy writing the entire frontend in JavaScript.

I think you’re discussing PWA technologies where I’m trying to talk about web APIs.

[–] expr 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Ah I see, my bad. You mentioned Ruby on rails and GraphQL so I assumed you were talking about some kind of MPA situation.

Yeah htmx doesn't replace data APIs for sure. Still not a fan of GraphQL for that purpose for the reasons above. There's a lot of good options for RPC stuff, or even better, you can use message queues. GraphQL is just a bad idea for production systems, IMO.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Yeah everyone says this then I look around at REST APIs (as a consumer and developer) and 99% are trash.

I’m loving GraphQL mainly for “take only what you need” and type definitions. Every other standard I can find has some crummy gem, serializers that need to be hacked because they never work out of the box, etc.

As soon as my experience changes maybe I’ll change my mind, but I’ve had to develop some REST APIs using Ruby and Rails and wasn’t happy. Meanwhile my side projects using GraphQL are just incredible, and I don’t want to kill myself after developing it.

[–] expr 1 points 1 month ago

I wasn't suggesting making JSON "REST" APIs (not actually REST, more accurately you might call them JSON data APIs or something). I meant protocols that are specifically meant for RPC, like gRPC, JSON-RPC, etc. Or message queues like RabbitMQ.

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