Book Review - Hypermedia Systems

I just finished reading the book Hypermedia Systems by Carson Gross, Adam Stepinski and Denis Akşimşek. It was a good read and I'd recommend it to anybody interested in the topic of web development or - even more general - application development. After all, the concept of Hypermedia Driven Applications (HDAs) can also be applied to mobile applications as demonstrated by Hyperview.

To me, the main accomplishment of the book is establishing the concept of Hypermedia Driven Applications (HDAs) with all their advantages (and a few disadvantages) over the seemingly prevalent choice of having a JSON Data-API between your backend and your frontend.

Chapters 01 through 05 contain the backstory of what Hypermedia is and cover the basics of HTMX. These chapters can safely be skipped if you have some prior exposure to HTMX, i.e. having heard talks or having read through the excellent documentation.

Chapters 06 and 08 cover some more advanced material like the hx-sync attribute. The bulk-delete section especially highlights how powerful the hypermedia approach can be.

Chapter 09 shows a few approaches of combining HTMX and Javascript. I liked the demonstration of integrating the SweetAlert2 javascript library with HTMX in an event-driven fashion. The cool thing is, that this can work for any kind of library or component, even your own!

Chapters 11 to 13 cover Hyperview and are really eye-opening when you've had any experience with the current state of mobile development. It mentions the notion of a complexity budget and highlights how the HDA approach can help focus spending this budget on the hard parts of your application. For my next mobile project, I'll definitely consider Hyperview as a very serious option.