Micro Frontends in Action is Michael Geer's 2020 book. It is a practical guide to implementing micro frontends, an approach that brings the microservices concept to the front end. The book provides a way to split monolithic frontend applications into smaller, more independent pieces, making large-scale web applications theoretically more maintainable and scalable.
Microfrontends is a term that comes from the ThoughtWorks TechnologyRadar (Nov 2016). However, even nine years later, this approach is still not mainstream. Companies with large websites like Spotify, Amazon, and IKEA use micro frontends to scale their front-end development. Still, companies of this size and websites probably used something similar, long before 2016, because they always had a problem with hundreds of teams working concurrently. They find custom solutions they see fit.
I liked the book, and I read it in just two days. It's a great introduction to Micro Frontends as the concept. The only problem is the actual implementation. The book describes a few approaches, but as far as I can see, almost none are mainstream approaches. If I had to implement the Micro Frontends, I would probably start with something simple, isolation on the URL level and separate applications. Maybe, with better frameworks with better support for micro frontends, I would change my mind.
The one thing, the book does not focus on, but I find interesting is upgrading frontends to other technologies. Maybe Micro Frontends could be used like a strangler fig pattern.
Author
Michael Geers is a software developer and architect who focuses on building user interfaces.
Resources
- https://micro-frontends.org/ - author's website
- https://vukvuk.com/posts/web-components-with-blazor - One of my experiments with Micro Frontends with Blazor