Hi John,
With Wappler we indeed always try to be on top of the latest, cutting edge technologies and tooling, so we can offer the best integration in Wappler and make them more accessible to use.
So we keep a close eye on emerging technologies, web standards, best practices, development and publishing workflows and tooling.
There are so many great open source tools and technologies, and picking the best ones is not always easy. Usually we wait till they proof them selves and gain a good traction in to their communities to become mainstream.
Also most of the technologies are usually initially very technical and difficult to use, so with integrating them with Wappler we make them much more accessible and easier to use.
So Wappler functions as a glue and productivity tool for frameworks usage, best practices, and tooling integration.
That said, here is a list of technologies and tools, that we keeping track on. With some we are looking forward to integrate into the future or are already integrated with, others are just good practice
The following list is by no means complete but it will give you a bit of an overview:
Design Frameworks
Design frameworks support are at the core of Wappler. So next to fully supporting Bootstrap4 and Framework7 we are also looking to add support for
Packaging Workflows
Packaging, workflows are also very important process in the modern web deployment. So are also looking at providing full support for deployment workflow with:
SPA and PWA
Single Page Apps and Progresive Web Apps are also becoming mainstream now so we are looking to add more support for them. We already offer good support in developing SPA but also have to add more tooling for PWA building. A good technologies for that are:
Drawing and Imaging
On the long term we are looking forward to add some more integration posibilities for designers like
- SVG Vector Drawing
- photo processing - optimization, editing, filter processing
- SVG optmization tools, like vectorinox
Testing Frameworks and Workflow
Automated testing of new websites and apps is also becoming a standard workflow, and a requirement for the professional development and delivery.
- Cypress
- Jest, Jasmine etc, see Testing Frameworks
Ecommerce
Stripe is becoming the main standard for processing payments, so we want to offer much wider integration with it. So we are looking on the short term for integration like
- A full Stripe integration with Stripe checkout
- Stripe elements
- various API and Webhook integrations.
Databases and management
We have the Visual Database Connector and Updater already integrated with Wappler. and are now working on a Database Management and creation tool to fit also the management and synchronization need.
The creator will be also based on a great new technology Sequelize that will allows us to connect and manage to all kind of databases.
Ci - Continuous Integration
CI is becoming more of a main stream and a new way of publishing, testing but also running various automated workflows. So integrations can be done with
- Travis CI
- Jenkins
- but also self running like concourse
- various other CI providers that also github offers integration to
Server Technologies and Deployment
Docker is becoming more a main stream publishing and deployment technology, so we will be integrating with it on many sides.
- Docker deployment workflow
- Docker machines deployment
- Running docker swarms
Edge Servers and Load Balancers
As more docker containers running various web sites needs to run on the same server or in a swarm of servers accessible through a single gate (edge) server, a new technologies are emerging called Edge Servers. Those needs to be managed easily during deployment, so we will be integrating with them as well. See general comparison
- Traefic - is one of the most popular ones and easy to use
- NGINX Proxy - mostly common used, nice usage guide with Docker based on jwilder/nginx-proxy
- Envoy Proxy - the most performant one, but a bit harder to use
Admin Dashboards and Monitoring
This is also a new area that offers many possibilties for creating great admin dashboards for devops and monitoring. Primary usage tool here is Grafana
- Full stack monitoring with the tools and stacks used in Dockerprom like Prometheus, cAdvisor
- Docker monitoring
Conclusion and Feedback
This list is by no means complete, but will give you a good overview of things we are following. You can try most of the tools and see how they work, so you can provide us with valuable feedback and ideas of integrations.