Category: Development

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Tailwind, Have I switched?

A man getting blown away in a storm, her is trying to hold onto a windsock

I’ve never been much of a designer. I know what I like, and I can recreate any design a designer passes my way. However, producing anything original is incredibly hard.

I switched to Bootstrap many years ago. I switched because I needed a way to solve this problem, Bootstrap made it easy to create what I wanted. Additionally, it would also look OK – typically much better than ok.

Bootstrap sites typically look the same and before I go on, I don’t necessarily consider that a “bad thing”. The problem arises when you don’t want everything to look the same. Customisation is possible with Bootstrap, particularly version 5. However, it gets complicated quickly.

I’ve released three Apps in the last year. Two game scorers for Yahtzee and Yatzy and Budget, a free open-source budgeting App. The Apps all look ‘similar’, this isn’t necessary a problem because they all belong to the Costs to Expect service so it should be obvious that they belong to the same brand. However, I wanted something different for Budget Pro, an evolution of Budget.

Why not Bootstrap?

Budget Pro belongs to the same family as all the Apps I released this year but being the paid version, I wanted to differentiate it from Budget and give it a sharpened look. Due to its features, it will also have a more complex UI than Budget. As I was thinking about how to ‘improve’ the Budget design I decided to give Tailwind a go as everything I’ve seen of it has impressed me, particularly Tailwind UI.

Why Tailwind?

Two things pushed me over the edge. Firstly. Tailwind UI, having an extensive library of components to build with and from made it easy to get started and start building up ideas. Secondly, the standalone cli; I don’t want or need any additional dependencies and prefer vanilla JavaScript over any front-end toolchains.

I’m only a little way into my journey with Tailwind but so far, I’m loving it. Yes, you end up with lots of classes in the HTML. However, you know what each of them do based on the name and I create components to reduce duplication anyway.

We’ll see if the honeymoon continues as I move away from landing and content pages. It is when you get into the nitty gritty of creating the meat of Budget Pro things might go south.

I ‘ll make sure to post a Tailwind update when I am further into the development of Budget Pro.

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Invokable Controllers

Action class usage in my Laravel Apps

For several years I have been a fan of invokable classes, typically to act as action classes for forms and to create jobs for queues etc.

Simple Forms

With regards to simple forms, this works well. The validation and creation code are all contained in one class keeping the code out of the controller. If all you need is validation and a little logic before saving/updating, this model works well. The model breaks down when the complexity of the request goes up.

Invokable Controllers

On a recent freelance project, I needed to validate the request, convert the data and then generate lots of additional values. This Apps calculates the viability of pumps based on the request so there are a lot of fluid dynamic calculations. Once the calculations have been processed, I can again calculate the viability. Only once I have calculated the viability do I save the request.

Naming

My action classes have simple names – createGame, saveUser, – you get the idea. When you read the name of the action, you know what it does and when you look inside, you have an idea about what you will see. This doesn’t work when there are five or six steps that must happen before the “quote” is created.

We get this benefit with invokable controllers as well but rather than the class names telling you what is happening, the method names in the controller describe what is happening. We get all the benefits of invokable action classes without the negative of a giant action class which is doing more than its name suggests.

I rarely need to use invokable controllers but when I do, they are a life saver.

I’ve a detailed post on how I use action classes and how the specific use changes on the structure of the App. If you are a fan of invokable action classes, please give it a read.