I think I’ve settled on a goto set of tools and libraries for building web-apps in Go. It used to be that I would turn to Buffalo for these sorts of projects, which is sort of a “Ruby on Rails but for Go” type of web framework. But I get the sense that Buffalo is no longer being maintained. And although it was easy to get a project up and running, it was a little difficult to go beyond the CRUD-like layouts that it would generate (or it didn’t motivate me enough to do so). Plus, all that JavaScript bundling… ugh!

Huge pain to upgrade any of that.Since I’ve moved away from Buffalo, I’m now left to do more of the work up-front, but I think it helps me to be a little more deliberate in how I build something. And after getting burned with Buffalo shutting down, I think it’s was time to consider a mix of tools and libraries that would give me the greatest level of code stability while still being relatively quick to get something up and running.

So, here’s my goto list of tools and libraries for building web-apps in Go.

  • HTTP Routing: For this, I use Fiber. I suppose using Go’s builtin HTTP router is probably the best approach, but I do like the utility Fiber gives for doing a lot of the things that go beyond what the standard library provides, such as session management and template rendering. Speaking of…
  • Server Side Templating: Nothing fancy here. I just use Go’s template engine via Fiber’s Render integration. It has pretty much all I need, so I don’t really look at anything else.
  • Database: If I need one, then I’ll first take a look at Sqlite. I use the modernc.org Sqlite driver, as it doesn’t require CGo, making deployments easier (more on that later). If I need something a bit larger, I tend to go with PostgreSQL using the pgx driver. I would also like to use StormDB if I could, but it doesn’t play well with how I like to deploy things, so I tend to avoid that nowadays.
  • Database ORM: I don’t really use an ORM (too much PTSD from using the various Java ORMs), but I do use sqlc to generate the Go code that interacts with the database. It’s not perfect, and it does require some glue code which is tedious to write. But what it does it does really well, and it’s better than writing all that SQL marshalling code from scratch.
  • Database Migration: I’ve tried using golang-migrate before, and we do use it at work for PostgreSQL databases, but it doesn’t work well with the modernc.org Sqlite driver. So I ended up writing my own. But if it makes sense to use golang-migrate, I will.
  • JavaScript: I try to keep my JavaScript usage to a minimum, favouring vanilla JavaScript if I only need a few things. For anything else, I usually turn to Stimulus.js, which adds just enough “magic” for the slightly more involved pieces of front-end logic. I’m also looking at HTMX, and have tried it for a few things, but I’ve yet to use it for a complete project. I use esbuild if I need to bundle my JavaScript, but I’m trying to go “builderless” for most things nowadays, relying on import maps and just serving the JavaScript as is.
  • CSS: Much like JavaScript, I still prefer to use vanilla CSS served directly for most things. I tend to start new projects by importing SimpleCSS by Kev Quirk. It makes the HTML look good right out of the gate, but it does make each project look a little “samey” but that’s up to me to address.
  • Live Reloading: I’ve only recently been a convert to live reloading. I did use it when I was bundling JavaScript, but since moving away from that, plus doing most things server-side anyway, I needed something that would build the entire app. I’ve started using Air for this, and it’s… fine. There are certain things that I don’t like about it — particularly that it tends to favour configuration over convention — but it does the job.
  • Deployment: Finally, when I’m ready to deploy something, I do so using Dokku running on a Linux server. I bundle the app in a Docker container, mainly using a Go builder image, and a scratch image for the run-time container (this scratch container has nothing else in it, not even libc, which is why I use the modernc.org Sqlite driver). All I need to do is run git push, and Dokku does the rest. Dokku also makes it easy to provision PostgreSQL databases with automated backups, and HTTPS certificates using Lets Encrypt. Deploying something new does involve logging into the remote server to run some commands, but having been burned by PaaS providers that are either too pricy, or not pricy enough to stay in business, I’ve found this setup to be the most stable way to host apps.

So, that’s my setup. It’s a collection that’s geared towards keeping the code low maintenance, even if it may come at the cost of scalability. I can’t tell you anything about that myself: I’m not running anything that has more than a couple of users anyway, and most things I’m running are only being used by myself. But I think that’s a problem for later, should it ever arise.