The Key to Building Large JavaScript Apps: The Modlet Workflow

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Chasen Le Hara on (Updated on )

You’re a developer working on a “large JavaScript application” and you’ve noticed some issues on your project. New team members struggle to find where everything is located. Debugging issues is difficult when you have to load the entire app to test one component. There aren’t clean API boundaries between your components, so their implementation details bleed one into the next. Updating your dependencies seems like a scary task, so your app doesn’t take advantage of the latest upgrades available to you.

One of the key realizations we made at Bitovi was that “the secret to building large apps is to never build large apps.” When you break your app into smaller components, you can more easily test them and assemble them into your larger app. We follow what we call the “modlet” workflow, which promotes building each of your components as their own mini apps, with their own demos, documentation, and tests.

Article Series:

  1. The Key to Building Large JavaScript Apps: The Modlet Workflow (You are here!)
  2. The Modlet Workflow: Improve Your Development Workflow with StealJS

Following this pattern will:

  • Ease the on-boarding process for new developers
  • Help keep your components’ docs and tests updated
  • Improve your debugging and testing workflow
  • Enforce good API design and separation of concerns
  • Make upgrades and migrations easier

Let’s talk about each of these benefits one by one to see how the modlet workflow can help your development team be more effective.

Ease the onboarding process for new developers

When a new developer starts on your project, they might be intimidated by the amount of files in your app’s repository. If the files are organized by type (e.g. a CSS folder, a JS folder, etc.), then they’re going to be searching across multiple folders to find all the files related to a single component.

The first step to following the modlet workflow is to create folders for each of your components. Each folder, or modlet, should contain all of the files for that component so anyone on your team can find the files they need to understand and develop the component, without having to search the entire project.

Additionally, we build modlets as their own mini apps by including at least the following files in their folders:

  • The main source files (JavaScript, stylesheets, templates, etc.)
  • A test JavaScript file
  • A markdown or text file for docs (if they’re not inline with your code)
  • A test HTML page
  • A demo HTML page

Those last two files are crucial to following the modlet workflow. First, the test HTML page is for loading just the component’s tests in your browser; second, the demo HTML page lets you see just that component in your browser without loading the entire app.

Improve your debugging and testing workflow

Creating demo and test HTML pages for each component might seem like overkill, but they will bring some great improvements to your development workflow.

The demo HTML page:

  • Lets you quickly see just that component without loading the entire app
  • Gives you a starting place for reproducing bugs (and reduces the surface area)
  • Offers you an opportunity to demo the component in multiple scenarios

That last item can be leveraged in a couple ways. I’ve worked on projects where we’ve:

  • Had multiple instances of the same component on a single page so we could see how it behaved in a few key scenarios
  • Made the demo page dynamic so we could play with dozens of variables to test a component

Last but not least, debugging issues will be easier because the component is isolated from the rest of the app. If you can reproduce the issue on the component’s demo page, you can focus your attention and not have to consider unrelated parts of your app.

The test HTML page gives you similar benefits to the demo HTML page. When you can run just a single component’s tests, you:

  • Don’t need to litter your test code with .only statements that will inevitably be forgotten and missed during code review
  • Can make changes to the component and focus on just that component’s tests before running the app’s entire test suite

Enforce good API design and separation of concerns

The modlet workflow also promotes good API design. By using each component in at least two places (in your app and on the demo page), you will:

  1. Consider exactly what’s required by your component’s API
  2. Set clear boundaries between your components and the rest of your app

If your component’s API is intuitive and frictionless, it’ll be painless to create a demo page for your component. If too much “bootstrapping” is required to use the component, or there isn’t a clean separation between the component and how it’s used, then you might reconsider how it’s architected.

With your component’s API clearly defined, you set yourself up for being able to take your component out of its original repository and make it available in other applications. If you work in a large company, a shared component library is really helpful for being able to quickly develop projects. The modlet workflow encourages you to do that because each of your components already has its own demos, docs, and tests!

Help keep your components’ docs and tests updated

A common issue I’ve seen on projects that don’t follow the modlet workflow is that docs and tests don’t get updated when the main source files change. When a team follows the modlet workflow, everyone knows where to look for each component’s docs and tests: they’re in the same folder as the component’s source code!

This makes it easier to identify missing docs and tests. Additionally, the files being in the same folder serve as a reminder to every developer on the team to update them when making changes to that component.

This is also helpful during code review. Most tools list files by their name, so when you’re reviewing changes for a component, you’re reminded to make sure the docs and tests were updated too. Additionally, flipping between the implementation and tests is way easier because they’ll be close to each other.

Make upgrades and migrations easier

Last but not least, following the modlet workflow can help you upgrade your app to new versions of your dependencies. Let’s consider an example!

A new major version of your JavaScript framework of choice is released and you’re tasked with migrating your app to the new version. If you’re following the modlet workflow, you can start your migration by updating the components that don’t use any of your other components:

The individual demo and test pages are crucial to making this upgrade. You can start by making the tests pass for your component, then double check it visually with your demo page.

Once those components work, you can start upgrading the components that depend on those:

You can follow this process until you get all of your app’s components working. Then, all that’s left is to test the actual app, which will be far less daunting because you know the individual components are working.

Large-scale migrations are easier when components are contained and well defined. As we discussed in an earlier section, the modlet workflow encourages clear API boundaries and separation of concerns, which makes it easier to test your components in isolation, making an entire app upgrade less intimidating.

Start using the modlet workflow in your app today

You can get started with the modlet workflow today—first, if your team is still organizing files by type, start grouping them by component instead. Move the test files to your component folders and add some HTML pages for demoing and testing your component. It might take your team a little bit of effort to transition, but it’ll be worth it in the long run.

Some of the suggestions in this article might seem intimidating because of limitations in your tooling. For example, if you use a module loader & bundler that requires you to create a separate bundle for each individual page, adding two HTML pages per component would require an intimidating amount of build configuration.

In the next article in this series, we’ll discuss how you can use a module loader and bundler called StealJS to load the dependencies for each of your components without a separate build for each HTML page.

Let me know what you think in the comments! If you follow a similar organization technique, then let me know what’s worked well and what hasn’t worked for you.

Article Series:

  1. The Key to Building Large JavaScript Apps: The Modlet Workflow (You are here!)
  2. The Modlet Workflow: Improve Your Development Workflow with StealJS