Did RSCs Really Turn React Into PHP? 

It is important to note that my jQuery code and vanilla JS code are performing what amounts to dangerouslySetInnerHTML operations (in React terms). In the case where you don't know the provenance of the data, or you have not properly sanitized it, this can lead to an XSS vulnerability, though the code shown here does not have an XSS vulnerability because the user input is not reflected. Please take care if you choose to use the JavaScript in the PHP or Rust examples (which is not recommended) to sanitize the code, or to create DOM elements programmatically and only set their innerText to avoid potential for XSS attacks.

The content of the table can be put in a and work with that so the headings dont need to be put each time.

Fantastic video Jack! Thanks a lot for taking your time to do this comparison. On a side-note, for heavy PHP users these days there is another library that really shines and it's alpinejs, it's lightweight, fast and integrates easily with php.

I think would be cooler to compare nextjs to laravel

I'm just a junior developer, but I also agree with the "we still don't know the best practices for the relationships between RSC and RCC". I believe, without clear instructions on how to handle these two, it might get messy really quick.

yay I'm just glad people are talking about Php again. I love it and I think it's one of the easiest languages to pick up if you want to start wrapping your mind around server-side!

The RSC patterns completely break down when you start to scale up an application. It becomes very difficult to remain consistent in how you use them. We ran into issues where we were just declaring "use client" on most components and only using the RSC as a data fetching layer. This led to issues with prop drilling from the top data component down to child client components. At that point, we just ditched the re-write project for 3 of our big Next apps. People hate getServerSideProps, and I get it, but I'd rather have that implementation over RSCs, as it sets a boundary, and the component receiving those props is just a client component. It just makes way more sense to me. I would look to something like Remix with its action/loader paradigm if I wanted to move away from NextJs, should they sunset pages and gSSP().

At the end Jack simply brought the absolute boss Rust lmao

Great content, easy to listen to, and highly informative. One thing possibly worth emphasizing further -- Response times or throughput for hello world style cases shouldn't carry too much weight. In many (most?) apps, most of the heavily lifting will be dominated by things outside app code, the database being the most common. So unless maximum performance at pretty much any cost is your goal, something that emphasizes developer productivity for web apps often hits the sweet spot. (i.e., something like PHP for a web app vs. Rust, C, C++). Even from a perspective of placing a high value on performance (see judyrecords for example) it wouldn't be a good choice to write/re-write it in a lower level language to eek out 10ms.

I love that the investigation gets wayyyyyyy more in depth as the video progresses 😂 good stuff!

Great video! It is cool to see PHP again as it's what I cut my teeth on back in '08. At work I'm still just using plain old client side react with Vite for the dev server. Since all our features are behind a login, SEO doesn't really matter to us. Also, as cool as all the SSR stuff is, I struggle to see the advantage of switching. We have a lot of complex UI stuff and I wonder how RSC will change it.

Really cool video ! I love those stats comparisons ! Rust is really impressive. And I do agree, the more i use the app router, the more i feel frustrated by having small tiny bugs, and I don't always get why is that happening.

Although it was a really nice comparison and a wonderful job at it as always from you Jack. I find it hard to really trust any of the data we got simply because a more complex app is needed to accurately measure many of the benchmarks performed in this video. If a base case App is all we care about, then framework builders should make their framework as simplistic as possible, since their out of the box "create--app" will probably be the most performant in that scenario. But then, in a large project, that will no longer be true because of all the extra stuff needed to make a good App. All in all, what I'm trying to say is that this video is likely a "micro-benchmark" scenario that should be taken with a grain of salt. Either way, great job! The video still highlights many ways of accomplishing the task and is a valuable source of information like always from you Jack, keep up the good work!

Thanks for making this video. It must have taken a lot of time. I still thinks React is going the wrong way. What NextJS is achieving now can be done with simpler code like you showed here. This can still be much better by using AlpineJS or Tubro

Dev speed is usually worth more money than performance. Once performance begins to be an issue you are making enough money with your app to hire primeagen to rewrite it for you in rust.

Fantastic video Jack! Thanks a lot for taking your time to do this comparison. I want to ask you if you can can give us an example about how to setup react server component with express or how to integrate react rsc with existing express app thanks !

Thank you for this. I will refer our PM and techlead to this video once I propose rewriting everything in Rust!

Laravel with Livewire would have been a nice comparison for the PHP side. Nice video though

Impressive, very nice. Let's see Paul Allen's performance comparison.

Clean breakdown thanks! I agree with on not adopting App router coding pattern yet.

Hey Jack, Great content, you are among the only few content creators who make videos about intermediate to advance topics. Kudos for that. Can I request a video regarding usage of React query in NextJs App directory?

Thanks a lot for an interesting comparison!

Excellent video Jack..!! I think there needs to be rethought in direction major JS frameworks are going. With cut throat competition in JS frameworks space they are just coming up with features which are not well thought out and more of a patchwork. Just look at syntaxes like "use client" and than there are special folders in NextJS with '(' syntax, all this I consider not very mature design. It works but it's not clean. Putting server functionality in client side frameworks is not adding much of a value. The whole JS full stack thing started with developers able to share models and some common functionality between both client and server so both always remain in sync and JS is the only option which is widely supported in both client and server. However, doesn't matter how much optimized JS runtime engines are at the end of the day JS is a "scripting language" and all variables/functions in JS is merely an "associative array". There is nothing much compiler/interpreter can do to get more performance. Just look at perf numbers...languages like PHP which is not known for performance are easily beating JS by miles. Matured systems like Java or .net core will easily beat JS and PHP by miles. In my opinion rather than overengineering this JS frameworks React should continue to improvise on client side and let server side systems handle their things for the better.

Tom uses PHP

Nice Jack, i love your channel :)

Hey Jack thanks for all the vids. Super cool to see. One kind of weird comparison is using php dev server. Do you think it would be a much fairer comparison for all to use a proxy server like nginx and runtime/process manager more typical to how node and php are deployed in production services? NGINX -> PHP FPM -> some php stuffs NGINX -> node upstream server via PM2-> some node stuffs You could try an Open Swoole for PHPs server and probably got nearly the same speed of the Rust server form testing I've seen with it. THanks for the vids!

Thank you for including Rust (again)!

thank you! great video as always

Great illustration of why "view as a product of state" is such an attractive offering. Important lesson for new learners about where we came from and why Nextjs/React w server actions is a huge plus in terms of DX.

1. Thanks for adding my comment in your video. that make my morning 2. at the end of the video, where you show the charts it would be nice that it indicates what result is better (Page Size (Kb) Lower is better), Response Time(s) Lower is better, Request Per second Higher is better) In that way it is clear what is the optimal value on the chart. Thanks!

Really well made video!

Yep, I still use pages for any project and will continue to use. It just makes sense

The component model and state management of React is hard to beat. I'm still sticking w/ React, but for now I will have to use the pages dir because the app router is still too slow.

Not sure about php, but it is very similar to asp webforms and postback, if you want async components it looks very similar to asp webforms with updatepanel postback, from 2005. The code and approach of react server components and server actions seems very similar.

Thanks Jack!😊

looking forward to the interview with ryan!

I'm doing a DevShare presentation at work this week on React Server Components. We have a lot of PHP code at my work. This video is great. We should just sit and watch this instead!

Great vid! I was expecting to see "components" being listed as a huge advangtage to PHP, for me that is the killer feature of React. Also I wonder how would affect the results if you used a PHP framework like Laravel or Symfony.

love your honesty!

YOU DID IT, YOU TOOK MY RECOMMENDATION TO DO SOME RUST!!!!!!!!!!! wooooooooooooooooooo

I think people were saying it's similar to modern php with Laravel and htmx/livewire. Not similar to old school php with jQuery.

Sad but true, the decision for all is based purely on job market. Not tech. Unless PHP starts to get more views on youtube.

That was a great video Jack, although as an avid PHP fan I was screaming at you for using jQuery so I'm glad you mentioned Vanilla JS towards the end. Very interesting to see that Rust server at the end too. I wonder if there's some future where we use Rust to deliver the SSR'd part of a page and React (or some other framework) on the front to handle the CSR?

It was legit & had a great discussion ❤

2 things you left out, general hosting cost and hard disk space needed... there is a massive difference right there spoiler PHP wins both!

Wow! I guess it's about time i migrate my NextJs app to PHP :)

Jack it's a request if possible can u make a video about making our own server component setup..and also explaining how RSC is working....🙏🙏🙏🙏

5:46 TIL you can await and receive data from a server action.

I actually plan to refactor my apps to HTMX and alphine, django and just make overkill todo app list with authentication in each front end framework with nextJS, Nuxt, Sveltekit, Etc Etc. incase future job applications wants a sample of those lol. the only constant in JS eco is the changes monthly. instead of correcting some lapses from previous push I ended up updating new version and breaking changes in frontend I'm so tired 😢

add solid to the comparison

a comparison with sveltekit would also be interesting

What would be the bundle size if instead of using a client component with a server action you just used a server component and filtered the json response using query params?

bro brought a bazooka to a knife fight i was not expecting rust ngl :p

I worked with PHP once for a project in December, figured out how to use it within a day or two just basic crud didn't know it was this performant.

there are lots of ways of do somenthing in web development or in software in general, I guess you have to put in a weighing what you need, what you want, ex: performance, friendliness development, eco system, all that dependent on you and your team, and it can change overtime, I'm sure there is a good reason of why multiple companies started its projects with ruby on rails regardless it wasn't super popular, like everything in the life it depends.

React, i choose you! :D

I like Rust but we don't have the DX of Javascript and React, I try using Yew and Leptos for SSR and reloading during development is too slow because we need to compile each time.

While the PHP example is fine, I feel like we would need an actual real-world example using a framework to make it apples to apples. As for Rust, rocket is great, although if your really want performance then actix is something mindblowing :)

what theme you using for vscode? i think for smaller and simpler project php is simpler and good but for bigger projects you need react,vue. using php so nice to see on yt. nice video :)

Should we use edge in next js real world projects can you make a video on it

anyone else having Vietnam flashbacks from seeing jQuery?

i would LOVE to see same metrics with solidjs too with signals😢

Nowadays it is no longer necessary to use jQuery, javascript has been greatly improved, I always prefer to write vanilla javascript than to include a lot of code that is not fully used.

In long term, the state management would exist on rust too no ? A fullstack framework as nextjs is but with rust instead of node ?

You there's a `` tag for tables, right? 😛

In general the PHP approach is pretty slick and simple. The problem I have with it is DX and docs. They are highly inferior to JS frameworks. Furthermore the frontend feels "decoupled" in a bad way, since you have your code spread across many places. Template file, js, CSS, PHP controller, ... And then there's the highly discussed scaling issue. On every request, everything is bootstrapped and run. Sounds like a ton of overhead to me. In the plus side your server is basically idle when there is no request. I can confirm the large Drupal apps slow. That's why these projects tend to have a lot of caching. Laravel Livewire might be a solution to this. I didn't try it, but I doubt that it handles reactive rendering as well as a js framework

JSX is just unrivaled tech for HTML construction: (1) XSS-safe by default and ensures proper construction of (2) attributes and (3) tags. A huge part of what makes PHP annoying is needing a template language for 1 and you can still mess up 2 and 3.

Please compare to server rendering in Marko and Qwik :)

is this like server/api in nuxt 3?

Perhaps filtering is not the best use case to illustrate server actions. I believe filtering, at least at low-medium scale, should be done fully on client. If we send all initial data on first request and keep it on client, there is no need to make additional requests and make server do extra work. And, depending on scale of our data, multiple searches could result in much bigger data transferred than full data set on initial load. For performance I can suggest looking into bun runtime. It can be used to make fast api server, but it is still in development, so it cannot run entire frameworks in its own runtime yet.

I’ll still use app router since that’s the only thing I know 😅, would be amazing to learn that rust tho. Any tips for a good video on it ? ❤🎉

Rust and Vanilla JS seems like a killer combo, of course, if you know Rust

Can you do a vid on incrementally changing components from using the pages dir to the app dir?

RSC and RQ next video?

This is a great video but as a side tangent, does it bother anyone else that he doesn't use a semantic Table element instead of Divs?

Can you make a video on your vs code setup

You can still get all of the React (or anyother SPA) library benefits if you create your APIs in PHP and use an SPA library on the front-end.

React actually did always look like PHP but it was client side. The re-render of the page when you POST new data is what the virtual dom emulates but in a better and more efficient way. PHP isn't bad because of how you could render templates, it was bad because of PHP the language and finicky environment it ran on.

Hi Mr. Herrington, few things to say by being honest and transparent; 1. When devs are comparing Nextjs and RSCs to PHP is in terms of DX, which means you are mixing business server logic ( sql queries, etc) in same file with view / presentation client layer (with interactivity + jsx). Since react release state in functional components was already bad, because you are also are mix business logic (interactivity logic) with presentation layer (jsx) in client side. In PHP you can and should do that separation where in NextJS at the moment you can not, similar like SvelteKit and NuxtJS do, by create a separated only for server logic. 2.Make no sense comparing server only language (Vannila PHP) with js runtime nodeJS framework like NextJS (Which include a client side framework / lib like react), And what you made with PHP is not secure because of XSS and the same on jquery and vanilla js. Where NerxtJS since is a framework and using jsx, is safe. 3.Why using php built in server when in real world you use server like Apache http or ngnix with PHP interpreter ? Also make no sense. And you should mention the version of PHP. 4. Why not comparing Vanilla PHP ( like said in point 2 make not sense) with React client side instead of jquery or vanilla js? 5. From start this comparison make no sense, however a transparent comparison would be using a php framework like Laravel or Symfony with and without react, which would be save to XSS in this case also. Beside when you bring rust to this, you dint with vanilla rust, you use frameworks too. So ya just another foot gun. So in this simple example, what is the point of using nextjs, when you can use vanilla PHP with Vanilla js which are pretty fast, slim and easy to use and even can save some money with hosting and in human resources. JS ecosystem are AWESOME . LOL.

Great video. Why does your PHP script fetches a json file over HTTP for every request? For much better performance, this json file could be fetched directly from a file without calling another webserver. The performance would then be much faster.

Could you make a video about Rusts Sledgehammer framework?

laravel with inertia gives isomorphic rendering by doing everything in vue/react/svelte

PHP is great

I would still prefer NextJS. Though, Rust looks fine, I am not a big fan of blowers.

9:23 Thank you so much for this! I was hoping for SQL injection in the PHP version, but XSS voluntarily is good choice as well 🎉

Golang please!

So should we move back to PHP and use vanilla js for smaller projects? When no node js server is possible, do you recommend using react like WordPress does in their block editor? Finally, if you are building a php and vanilla js app, do you actually recommend fetching php served pages? Doesn't that take forever every time you make a change?

Am I wrong in saying that you are comparing a full frontend framework with jquery which has no data binding? Like mentioned by others use alpine, htmx or at least some jquery plugin for data binding. But yes hard to beat RSC in react

Really wish you used Alpine instead of jQuery. The comparison would've been a lot more analagous. Also... maybe even Laravel Livewire?

It's a great video. Thanks for the content! But I think that comparing Next js with vanilla php + jquery in terms of DX is not really fair. There are a ton of tools in php ecosystem that you can use for problems like this.

I would use the one that makes me more money

PHP is honestly better than RSC/Nextjs for the mental model they are going for. I feel like React/Nextjs strengths are still for creating a minimally hydrated SPA with fast interactions. If we were to compare interaction speeds with a json api call, it should be better than PHP or RSC. RSC are currently the worst of both worlds. If I want fast interactions I would go for a SPA. If I want fast page loads I would go for static/PHP/Rust

Go also rocks it, but simpler

What drives me nut is the cost of hosting a nextjs application. But with php you can host your application on a shared hosting- just copy your files and paste.

What Pokémon is your favorite though? 🧐🧐🧐

Using JQuery created a bit of an unfair comparison. AlpineJS would've made more sense here.

I think the ending of this video is a perfect segue into the video Theo did over on his channel: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-2Z4fZtSKlcE.html

U have taken my comment seriously 😂

php save people life. so hate if you want to hate php. but i will use php no matter what.

what year is this?