Sitecore Symposium 2019: Build JSS Websites with Blazor

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Blazor is Microsoft’s very new and exciting technology. This session was led by two Sitecore MVPs and showed a proof of concept for creating a JSS framework for Blazor. Since Blazor is not yet supported by Sitecore, the project is community-driven. Here are my key takeaways from their presentation:

• What is Blazor?
  • A new web development framework from Microsoft
  • Interactive web UI built on C# and .NET Core
  • Competes with Angular and React
  • Uses SignalR or WebAssembly
  • Open source
  • Removes the barriers of Webpack, Npm, and Babel
• Blazor Hosting Methods:
  • Blazor Server
  • Blazor WebAssembly
• Blazor Server:
  • How it works
    • Persistent connection from the client to the server
    • Events are sent to the server using SignalR
    • Blazor server runs on .NET Core and sends html to the client
  • Advantages
    • Server side debugging
    • Small download size
    • Faster load time
    • Thin client support
  • Disadvantages
    • Noticeable latency
    • No offline support
    • .NET Core required
      • Means it’s not easily compatible with Sitecore
• Blazor WebAssembly
  • How it works
    • Gives languages a true way to run in the browser
    • Code is NOT compiled to javascript
  • Advantages
    • Language familiarity
    • Offline support
    • Runs client side
    • Host anywhere
    • Can work with Sitecore since rendering host is separate from Sitecore
  • Disadvantages
    • Still under construction
    • Full release expected 5/2020
    • Limited to existing browser capabilities
    • Horrible debugging
    • Huge download size
      • 9.5MB base for webassembly dlls
      • Size increases as you add your own code and other external libraries
• JSS Blazor
  • Not officially supported by JSS for Sitecore
  • Community driven
    • Visit jssblazor.cool to find the github repo and start contributing or testing
  • Officially launched at Sitecore Symposium 2019
  • Not ready for production use
    • Proof of concept stage today
    • Still a little slow compared to other JSS frameworks
  • Built on webassembly
  • Full 1-1 mapping of base style guide from JSS/Angular and JSS/React

Sitecore Symposium has many interesting sessions. I have been documenting the ones I have been attending and adding them to my session review. Follow me to get updates!