htmx: Dynamic Web Apps with Just HTML
htmx is a modern JavaScript library that allows you to build dynamic web applications using only HTML attributes. It enables seamless AJAX, CSS transitions, WebSockets, and server-sent events without writing custom JavaScript. By extending HTML with powerful capabilities, htmx brings the responsiveness of single-page applications (SPAs) without the complexity of traditional JavaScript frameworks. It follows a “hypermedia-driven” approach, making server responses dictate UI changes, which aligns well with RESTful design.
Developers can progressively enhance pages, meaning existing HTML works as-is and only gets more powerful with htmx. It’s a great fit for projects using server-side rendering, like those built with Django, Flask, Rails, or Go. With htmx, you can update parts of a page (like a table or form) without reloading the whole page. This results in faster load times and a smoother user experience. The syntax is intuitive — for example, hx-get, hx-post, and hx-target are all HTML attributes that handle requests and DOM updates.
Ultimately, htmx empowers developers to build rich, interactive web interfaces with minimal JavaScript and a clean, maintainable codebase.
