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beartown's avatar

Pros and cons of Next.js, Laravel Livewire and Laravel Inertia

Folks, I'm trying to decide what's the best tool for me to master. I'm a fullstack developer, I feel comfortable writing both frontend and backend code. I love Laravel and React, they are my favorites. The three tools I found to consider are:

  • Next.js
  • Laravel Livewire
  • Laravel Inertia

Please tell me if my understanding is correct. I think Laravel Livewire is the most limited out of the three, as it makes it sufficient to focus on the backend code, ignoring the frontend. I imagine it causes a lot of limitations when it comes to custimizing the frontend behavior, but please correct me if I'm wrong.

When it comes to Laravel Inertia vs. Next.js, I imagine Next.js is more powerful, but I'm not sure exactly what cases does it handle better. Having common language (JavaScript) for both frontend and backend has its perks for sure. But other than that, what can one do that another can't?

If someone is familiar with all three, can you please elaborate on what are the strengths and limitations of each tool? You may also suggest different tool if you find it worthwhile. Thank you!

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richardhulbert's avatar

I have not used Next.js and for the most part I use Vue.js in the front end. However I would say the single most important question I would ask myself when choosing the this tech is: What an I going to build?

I do a lot of SPAs and the main issue with an SPA is state. In the Vue as in React you will need a router and some sort of client side state manager such as Piña for Vue or Redux for React for a headless app. Next.js could well be a good fit however...

If you like Laravel (and you probably do since you are here) I would give Inertia a really good look. Routing and state management happen in the Laravel environment and this means that stuff like authentication and permissions can be handled out of the box in a Laravel way.

In my opinion if you are building SPAs, already use Laravel then Inertia is a very good solution.

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