Transpiling Micro-Frontend Code for Consistent Web Navigation
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing web application frameworks struggle to maintain consistency in the look and feel across multiple web applications, and fail to allow for independent development and seamless navigation between them.
Innovation Solution
A navigation framework that uses a parent application to transpile child application code from one programming language to another, enabling the display of micro-frontends within a web browser as part of a single page application, allowing for independent development and consistent user experience across web applications.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If multiple web applications are integrated into a single website to provide consistent look and feel, then user experience consistency is improved, but system complexity and difficulty of independent development increase
Solution Approach 1:
The system divides the web application into independent micro-frontend modules (child applications) that can be developed, deployed, and maintained separately. Each child application is encapsulated as an independent unit within the parent application, allowing teams to work independently while maintaining overall system consistency through the portal framework.
Solution Approach 2:
The parent application acts as an intermediary portal that hosts and coordinates multiple child applications. It provides the common header, footer, and navigation framework that ensures consistent look and feel, while allowing individual child applications to be developed using different programming languages and frameworks without affecting others.
2Productivity
If child applications are developed in different programming languages independently, then development efficiency and team autonomy are improved, but integration complexity and language compatibility issues increase
Solution Approach 1:
The system changes the parameter of code representation by transpiling child application code from various programming languages into a common executable format that the web browser can render. This allows developers to use their preferred languages (JavaScript, TypeScript, Python, Java, etc.) while the transpiler handles the conversion, eliminating direct language compatibility requirements.
Solution Approach 2:
The transpiler serves as an intermediary that bridges different programming languages. It receives code from child applications written in various languages, translates them into a common format, and enables them to run within the parent application's web browser environment, thus resolving integration complexity between different language ecosystems.
3Ease of operation
If a navigation framework is implemented to allow seamless transitions between web applications, then user experience and navigation smoothness are improved, but system complexity and framework implementation difficulty increase
Solution Approach 1:
The system merges multiple child applications into a single parent application runtime environment. The portal framework combines the navigation capabilities, common UI elements, and application hosting into one unified system that manages transitions between child applications seamlessly, providing smooth user experience without requiring separate browser navigations.
Solution Approach 2:
The parent application portal framework is designed as a universal platform that can host and manage multiple different child applications with different functionalities. It provides a standardized interface for navigation, rendering, and state management that works across all child applications, reducing the need for application-specific navigation logic and simplifying the overall framework.
4Adaptability or versatility
If transpilation is performed to convert child application code to browser-executable format, then language flexibility and independent development are improved, but processing time and computational resources increase
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs transpilation of child application code in advance during the build or deployment process, converting source code from various programming languages into the target executable format before runtime. This preliminary action reduces or eliminates transpilation delays during user interactions, as the code is already prepared and can be loaded directly by the web browser.
Data Source
AI summary
Methods, systems, and computer-readable medium are disclosed for presenting web application content. For example, a computer-readable medium may include instructions executable by one or more processors to perform operations including: executing a parent application using a web browser, the parent application being a single page application configured to display a web page element in the web browser; identifying a child application requested by a user action; obtaining, from a server system, child application code of the identified child application, the child application code defining a micro-frontend in a first programming language; transpiling the child application code from the first programming language to a second programming language executable by the web browser, to obtain a transpiled child application code renderable by the web browser; and rendering the transpiled child application code so that the micro-frontend is displayed in the web browser.