We already talked about Micro Frontends: Why?

As web applications grow in complexity, maintaining a consistent tech stack becomes crucial for efficiency and scalability. If you have multiple projects using different frameworks, like Angular and React, unifying them can seem daunting. However, Micro Frontends offer a modern solution to this challenge, allowing you to integrate diverse projects seamlessly. Here’s how you can leverage Micro Frontends to unify your Angular and React projects.

Micro Frontends extend the microservices idea to the frontend world. They allow different teams to develop and deploy their frontend applications independently. Each part of the application can be built using different frameworks or libraries and then integrated into a larger application.

Advantages of Micro Frontends

  1. Framework Agnostic: Integrate Frameworks (e.g. Qwik, Angular and React) seamlessly, allowing teams to choose the best tool for each task.
  2. Incremental Upgrades: Refactor parts of your application gradually without rewriting everything at once.
  3. Team Autonomy: Different teams can work on separate parts of the application independently, improving productivity.
  4. Scalability: Scale parts of the application independently to enhance performance and responsiveness.
  5. Decoupling: Develop, test, and deploy Micro Frontends independently, reducing overall system complexity.

Implementing Micro Frontends

1. Choose a Composition Method

  • Server-Side Composition: Assemble different micro frontends into a single HTML response on the server. This approach benefits performance but can be complex to manage.
  • Client-Side Composition: The client (browser) loads and assembles the different micro frontends. This approach offers flexibility and is easier to implement but may affect initial load time.
  • Edge-Side Composition: Compose at the CDN or edge server level, combining the benefits of both client-side and server-side compositions.

2. Define Clear Contracts

Ensure Micro Frontends communicate through well-defined APIs or contracts to maintain loose coupling and enable independent deployment.

3. Shared Components and Utilities

Maintain shared components and utilities for consistency across different micro frontends. This includes UI libraries, authentication modules, and state management tools.

4. Routing Management

Use a routing mechanism to handle navigation between different micro frontends smoothly. Tools like single-spa or Module Federation in Webpack can manage this effectively.

5. Deployment Strategy

Adopt a deployment strategy where each Micro Frontend can be deployed independently. Setting up CI/CD pipelines for each part of your application is crucial for this approach.

Tools and Frameworks for Micro Frontends

  1. Single-spa: A framework for integrating multiple JavaScript microfrontends into a single frontend application.
  2. Module Federation (Webpack 5): Shares modules across different builds and manages Micro Frontends efficiently.
  3. Nx: Extensible dev tools for monorepos, useful for managing Micro Frontends.
  4. Pirateship: A Micro Frontend framework for building distributed web applications.

Working Example

Read in next post: Micro Frontends: Working Example