Join forces with Telescope/Nova

[arunoda]

Hey guys,

Me and @SachaG has an conversation about the Telescope re-write Nova. See: http://www.telescopeapp.org/blog/building-apps-with-nova-react-meteor/

This is about how we think about Nova:

Basically, my idea is for Telescope/Nova to become a back-end layer for React apps.

He also planning to build a front-end with Mantra. So, I just came to this project.

@vonwao How about we can join forces with Nova. Then we can do a much better job and work with Sacha. He's a pretty awesome guy to work with :)

[SachaG]

Just to clarify a little: at this stage, Nova is basically the React version of Telescope. But I'm in the process of removing Telescope-only features, and extracting Nova's various components into their own packages. So eventually I hope to end up with something that's like a cross between Telescope and some kind of Meteor-based React back-end.

Practically speaking, right now I've extracted these four Nova packages:

https://github.com/meteor-utilities/react-list-container
https://github.com/meteor-utilities/React-Form-Containers
https://github.com/meteor-utilities/smart-publications
https://github.com/meteor-utilities/smart-methods

Since Mantra focuses mostly on front-end architecture, and these packages focus mostly on the back-end, I thought maybe it might make sense to adopt them in Mantra projects?

[SachaG]

One thing to figure out maybe is SimpleSchema vs Astronomy. Nova uses SimpleSchema, but I notice this project uses Astronomy. Is Astronomy more adopted in the Mantra community?

[vonwao]

This looks great @SachaG . I think it makes a lot of sense, and I don't want to reinvent the wheel.

I personally don't (so far) have a preference of Simple Schema vs Astronomy. I do like Simple. I'm not sure how much value an ODM/ORM adds, in my experience. I would say Mantra is so new that most people are still in exploration phase.

My first question is: are there any gaping holes to fill? Where should I start? One thing I heard people request is good user account support for React. Roles/security is something I would also want.

re: this project: does it make sense to kill mantra-dialogue, maybe get absorbed into Telelescope as a configuration options?

[smooJitter]

I think this is a fantastic effort especially if it can benefit from tools such as the Mantra Atom Plug-in.

SimpleSchema vs. Astronomy , this a big deal. I recall a conversation about the two converging around a standard schema definition. Given the above, along with the work on Apollo, for someone moving towards Mantra in React-Native, which schema gives the most flexibility to work with, Mantra, the Nova packages cited, validated methods, and over ddp and graphql.

[SachaG]

I guess I'll keep using SimpleSchema for now then.

User account support would be great. I noticed the Mantra Kickstarter has a user account UI, maybe it could be extracted?

I don't know if it makes sense to kill this project, I we can talk about it once things are a little more advanced?

For me a good first step (apart from working on improving Nova itself) would be seeing if it makes sense to use the packages I extracted in this project.

[vonwao]

Yeah, now that I explored the nova packages I understand better how it fits together, so I can try to use these independent packages for this project.

In Nova, I can't tell where is coming from. I guess that's a blaze component. It makes sense to rewrite it in React, maybe this is the only thing that still depends on Blaze?

The problem with the users module in Mantra Kickstarter is it's complicated, it has many routes... I'm not sure but I think it's not very clean. I will explore this more.

[vonwao]

This is a thread where they are talking about SimpleSchema and Astronomy, maybe it's the thread @smooJitter was talking about:

https://forums.meteor.com/t/meteor-react-form-autoform-for-react/17542

[SachaG]

In Nova I'm using https://github.com/Meteor-Alt/accounts

[vonwao]

Oh, so it's using React for this. I wonder why we still have blaze... and accounts-ui. Seems like too many dependencies somewhere! I wonder, how to track down dependencies.