133: Sam Selikoff - Building Production-Ready SPAs Fast with Mirage.js

In this episode of Fullstack Radio, I talked to Sam Salikoff about using Mirage JS to build production ready at front end features even if your API isn't ready yet. This is Fullstack Radio episode one thirty three. So the other day, you when was the other day? Like, Friday? Was it Friday? Friday. Yeah. So Friday, you released kind of the first real deal version of Mirage JS. And even that is actually a little bit confusing to me, and I'm interested in getting the story around that because as far as I know, like, Mirage has been a tool that people have been using in the Ember community, for a long time. So what is Mirage in the fewest kind of words possible? And why is it that just now we're getting kind of like the universal, Mirage release? And what is different compared to what people have been using for years in Ember? Good question. Good question. And the confusion is understandable. Yeah. Mirage is an API mocking tool for front end developers. So specifically, it monkey patches, window XML HTTP request and fetch. And anytime your application code tries to use those to make a network request, which is how JavaScript apps get get data from a server, Mirage is gonna intercept those and return some, dummy data instead, basically. Got it. So I think, someone would hear that pitch and it would be easy for them to assume that Mirage is like a library that you use when running your tests, and that's kind of its main job. Like, oh, yeah. It's like a plug in for Jest or something. You know, it almost feels like it fits in that category. But from kinda like learning more about the project from you over the last couple of months where you've been kinda hacking on it, I think the real powerful part of it is kinda, like, the actual front end development workflow it enables rather than, like, how it could or could not be used for testing. So do you mind talking a little bit about, like, why it's a useful tool even for well, not even for, but why it's a useful tool just as part of your front end development workflow completely ignoring, like, the whole writing automated tests side of things. Yeah. Definitely. So, it it did come from a testing world, but what it is today is different. And like you said, it's really the development work flow it enables, which is one of the main value propositions of Mirage. And that is kind of this front end first workflow where, a team that is working on a fat client app, you know, an SPA or, you know, even teams that build, like, native iOS apps. Those kinds of apps have a data layer. They have these really nice boundaries between kind of the client interactions and the server piece. And so what happens when you're building apps like that is …