Micro frontends is an architectural pattern for building web applications as a composition of loosely coupled, independently deployable frontend modules. It extends the principles of microservices to the frontend, allowing teams to develop, deploy, and scale parts of the user interface independently. In essence, micro frontends break down a large, monolithic frontend application into smaller, more manageable pieces, each with its own technology stack, development team, and deployment pipeline.

Key characteristics of micro frontends

  1. Modularity: Micro frontends promote modularity by dividing the user interface into smaller, self-contained units called micro frontends. Each micro frontend represents a cohesive set of features or functionality, allowing teams to focus on developing and maintaining specific parts of the application.

  2. Technology Diversity: Unlike traditional monolithic frontend architectures, micro frontends allow for flexibility in technology choices. Each micro frontend can be built using different frontend frameworks or libraries, such as Angular, React, Vue.js, or even server-side rendered technologies like Qwik or Next.js. This enables teams to use the most suitable tools for their requirements without being constrained by a single technology stack.

  3. Independence: Micro frontends enable teams to work independently on their respective micro frontend modules. Each team has full control over the development, testing, deployment, and scaling of their micro frontend, which promotes autonomy and agility within the organization.

  4. Decentralized Development: With micro frontends, development teams can work in parallel on different parts of the user interface, reducing dependencies and bottlenecks. This decentralized approach to development enables faster iteration and delivery of new features, as well as easier integration of third-party components or services.

  5. Seamless Integration: Despite being developed independently, micro frontends need to seamlessly integrate with each other to provide a cohesive user experience. Communication between micro frontends is typically achieved through standardized interfaces, such as custom events, shared state management, or APIs, allowing them to interact and collaborate as needed.

  6. Scalability and Maintainability: Micro frontends offer scalability and maintainability benefits similar to microservices on the backend. They enable teams to scale parts of the frontend application independently, both horizontally (by replicating instances) and vertically (by optimizing performance and resource usage). Additionally, the modular nature of micro frontends makes it easier to refactor, update, and replace individual modules without impacting the entire application.

Overall, micro frontends provide a flexible and scalable approach to frontend development, allowing organizations to adapt to changing requirements, technology trends, and organizational structures while maintaining a cohesive user experience.

Common Use Cases

Micro frontends offer several benefits, and combining Qwik, Angular, and React in a micro frontend architecture can be particularly useful in certain scenarios:

  1. Legacy Integration: If you have a legacy application built with Qwik but want to introduce new features or modules using modern frameworks like Angular or React, micro frontends allow you to gradually migrate parts of the application without rewriting the entire codebase.

  2. Team Independence: Different teams within your organization may have expertise in different frontend frameworks. By adopting a micro frontend architecture, each team can work independently on their respective micro frontends using the framework they’re most comfortable with, whether it’s Qwik, Angular, or React.

  3. Component Reusability: With micro frontends, you can create reusable UI components using Qwik, Angular, or React and share them across different parts of your application. This promotes consistency in design and behavior while reducing duplication of code.

  4. Scalability: Micro frontends allow you to scale your application more efficiently by breaking it down into smaller, manageable units. You can deploy, update, and scale each micro frontend independently, making it easier to handle increased traffic and evolving requirements.

  5. Isolation and Security: By encapsulating each micro frontend within its own boundary, you can achieve better isolation and security. This prevents changes in one part of the application from affecting others, reducing the risk of unintended side effects or security vulnerabilities.

  6. Dynamic Composition: Micro frontends enable dynamic composition of your application, allowing you to assemble and reassemble different parts of the user interface based on user roles, permissions, or other factors. This provides greater flexibility in tailoring the user experience to specific use cases or user segments.

Overall, the use case for integrating Qwik, Angular, and React in a micro frontend architecture revolves around achieving flexibility, scalability, maintainability, and interoperability in your frontend development process. It allows you to leverage the strengths of each framework while mitigating their respective limitations, resulting in a more robust and adaptable application architecture.

What does it look like?

In this setup, the Qwik shell application acts as the main container, while the Angular and React micro frontends represent different parts of the application.

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project/
│
├── shell-app/               # Qwik Shell Application
│   ├── src/
│   │   ├── components/      # Qwik Components
│   │   ├── services/        # Shared Services
│   │   └── ...
│   └── ...
│
├── angular-microfrontend/   # Angular Microfrontend
│   ├── src/
│   │   ├── app/             # Angular Components
│   │   ├── services/        # Shared Services (if any)
│   │   └── ...
│   └── ...
│
├── react-microfrontend/     # React Microfrontend
│   ├── src/
│   │   ├── components/      # React Components
│   │   ├── services/        # Shared Services (if any)
│   │   └── ...
│   └── ...
│
└── ...

How to do it?

Read in next post: Micro Frontends: How?

Future Reading