How to kill JavaScript from your Stack with HTMX and Kotlin

Interactive full-stack web application often require TypeScript, a JavaScript framework, third-party libraries to handle routing and data fetching, serialization, and a database.

To reduce complexity, one alternative is using server-side HTML templating engines like Thymeleaf or Handlebars. However, this sacrifices interactivity and composability, and it introduces the risk of breakage whenever the data model changes, due to the lack of static compilation.

In this talk, discover how to build a full-stack web application without relying on a templating or frontend frameworks. We’ll bypass the REST APIs altogether. Instead, experience the power of Kotlin DSLs, which allow you to write expressive, composable and type-safe code, and achieve a user experience rivaling Single Page Applications by using HTMX for dynamic interactions. Using a simple web application as an example, we’ll explore how to do routing, page transitions, real time validation, and write components that can be reused.