vue-template-service's Introduction

vue-template-service

(Note that the service name is currently misleading and subject to change. It was initally a spike to create a generic vue template rendering service, but then turned into a demo of completely decoupling the view layer from the mediawiki stack)

Motivation / Design Principles

Increase cohesion: Change to a view only needs to touch a single JS file
Reduce coupling: All dependencies on the mediawiki stack, such as l10n, are exposed via APIs.
Modernize infrastructure: This introduces a build step, which allows us to write ES2017 instead of ES5 without losing browser compatibility (this will need some polyfilling and integration tests which are out of scope for the spike).
Reduce devlopment feedback cycle and developer experience: By testing in isoloation and using modern development features like hot reladoing, we reduce cycle times both locally and in the continuous integration phase.
Move towards continuous deployment: Decoupling the service will make it much easier to move towards adopting continuous deployment practices and deliver value faster.
Remove accidental complication: We are aiming to break volatile dependencies, ban all global objects and remove unneccessary layers of custom abstractions such as the resource loader aliases, which already broke standard JS tooling and created hard to debug errors during this spike.
Decrease setup cost: The Frontend can be used without a running mediawiki. The current spike only assumes a recent node.js installation.
Improve Inclusivity: Moving towards are more modern stack means developers can contribute to the project without learning about PHP or the mediawiki stack.