Hey, I plan to start a personal project and I woul...

# javascript

[ribesg]

Hey, I plan to start a personal project and I would like to make the frontend in Kotlin. What are viable solutions right now? I remember looking at some React things in Kotlin but it was mostly PoC at the time.

[ribesg]

I think Kotlin -> wasm isn’t ready, it would have been nice to try that as well

[mp]

https://play.kotlinlang.org/hands-on/Building%20Web%20Applications%20with%20React%20and%20Kotlin%20JS/01_Introduction

maybe will be useful

[Big Chungus]

Kotlin react is definitely the most stable way to go now. JB team themselves are using it, so they provide up to date wrappers for it.

[Robert Jaros]

You can try KVision: https://github.com/rjaros/kvision

[ribesg]

Yeah React and KVision were the 2 solutions I found to be currently under development. Thanks

[Big Chungus]

Just to be clear, kotlin react is not a react implementation in kotlin. It's just a bunch of JS wrappers for the actual JS react

[Big Chungus]

As for KVision, it's definitelly worth a look, especially if you;re considering multiplatform architecture

[ribesg]

Well I do use multiplatform but I don’t see anything about it in KVision’s doc?

[ribesg]

In the end I’ll probably want multiple frontends

[Big Chungus]

It's not built as universal frontend if that's what you expect. It has support with simmilar structure wrapping the common frontend technologies for all platforms

[Big Chungus]

e.g. bootstrap for web, electron for desktop, cordova for mobile

[Big Chungus]

From my experience the only downside to it that it is a bit rigid, not allowing for too much customisations

[Big Chungus]

But everything is doable with it, just in a slightly constrained manner

[Big Chungus]

Furthermore the author is open to pull requests if you are missing a specific feature

[ribesg]

I don’t think I’ll use things like electron and cordova. I prefer to use Kotlin/Native on iOS, and actual Android app, and probably OpenJFX on desktop

[ribesg]

I understand that it’s more work but it’s also more fun and more performance

[Big Chungus]

For MPP client architecture I'd strongly recomment to look into MVP (ModelViewPresenter) design.

[Big Chungus]

It'll allow you to put all the client logic in a shared module and only implement the "skins" (i.e. display logic) in platform-specific module

[ribesg]

Yes, that’s what I use. I’m not sure if I’ll be able to only have the View part for each platform, I don’t have the frontends designed yet

[Big Chungus]

I'm currently working on the example of this. Can share it with you if you;re interested.

[ribesg]

I have a MPP app in production for Android & iOS already

[ribesg]

Which actually shares code with some of the backends

[Big Chungus]

If it's MVP and you're able to share code I'd very much like to have a look at it

[ribesg]

That’s work code I don’t have the right to share unfortunately. I did made some Gists a long time ago about one specific problem https://gist.github.com/Ribesg/95a172ceb2177d74cf5b15993d40092e

[Big Chungus]

Unfortunately I'm interested in how people implement MPP MVP, rather than the tooling setup. But it's fine.

[ribesg]

Well it’s kinda straightforward, iOS and Kotlin/Native are a pain but in general it works great. We write our ViewControllers in Swift to ease outlets mapping.