Comment by MichaelNolan

Htmx offers more flexibility than Alpine Ajax. Here's an example: htmx allows using relative selectors, which allow you to target elements relative to the triggering element in the DOM tree. This gives us a lot of power for swapping in pieces of UI without having to make up ids for lots of elements.

I have a blog post in the works for this feature, here's a small code sample I made to show the idea:

    <div class="card"> ╾──────────────╮
      <header class="card-header">    |
        <a                            |
          class="button is-link"      |
          title="Load links for #167" |
          role="button"               |
          aria-expanded="false"       |
          href="/app/notes/167/links" |
          hx-trigger="click once"     |
          hx-boost="true"             |
          hx-push-url="false"         │
          hx-target="closest .card" ╾─╯
    ╭───╼ hx-swap="beforeend show:none"
    |   ><b>±</b></a>
    |   <a
    |     class="card-header-title"
    |     href="/app/notes/167"
    |     hx-boost="true"
    |     hx-target="#note"
    |     hx-swap="outerHTML transition:true show:window:top"
    |   >#167 Velificatio</a>
    | </header>
    ╰╼
    </div>

I have tried to use exclusively each of the libraries to better understand their limit, overtime I got to the following observations:

- htmx is more straightforward (because a lot of the magic basically happening in the backend) and helps a lot to keep some sanity.

- Alpine shines when you need more composition or reactivity in the frontend. But it gets verbose quickly. When you feel you are reimplementing the web, it means you went too far.

For pagination, page structure, big tables, confirmation after post etc. I usually go with htmx. Modals, complex form composition (especially when you need to populate dropdowns from differents APIs), fancy animations, I prefer Alpine. (I probably could do that with htmx and wrapping it in a backend - but often more flexible in the frontend directly.)

To me, the main reason why I use these libraries, is what I write today will still be valid in 5 years without having to re-write the whole thing, and it matters since I have to maintain most of what I write.