Module Federation: Divide, Conquer, Share!

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Reusing front-end features built by different teams can be challenging depending on the chosen approach. If we use a library, what about versioning and maintenance? If we use a monolith, what about build times? We can find a pragmatic solution in Module Federation, not only for sharing features but also for dividing and conquering. Join me in this talk to discuss the latest updates of Module Federation, type safety, analyze its challenges, and check a real-world case where we applied this solution to share providers, hooks, features, and interesting issues we faced on the way.

This talk has been presented at JSNation US 2024, check out the latest edition of this JavaScript Conference.

FAQ

To ensure high availability, serve assets from reliable sources like CDNs or industry-standard storage solutions, and implement error boundaries to handle runtime failures gracefully.

Tools like Medusa help visualize micro frontend dependencies, and the Chrome Model Federation plugin can assist in debugging by showing how modules are connected and consumed.

Use a shared UI kit to ensure consistency in styling across different micro frontend components, avoiding divergent styles like using different fonts on different pages.

State management should aim for decoupling. Use techniques like hooks, prop drilling, or local storage to manage state independently, or consider creating a federated module specifically for state management.

Micro frontends are an architectural approach where a web application is broken down into smaller, independent, and self-contained frontend components that can be developed, deployed, and maintained by separate teams.

Micro frontends can be beneficial when your team or application has grown, requiring separate teams for maintenance. They allow for independently deployable components, improving maintainability and scalability.

Module federation is a technique introduced in Webpack 5, allowing parts of a web application, like components or functions, to be shared across applications at runtime without needing to redeploy the host application.

Build-time techniques require redeployment for changes, ensuring version consistency but adding complexity. Runtime techniques, like module federation, allow immediate updates without redeployment but can introduce runtime errors if backward compatibility isn't maintained.

The strangle pattern involves incrementally updating or replacing parts of an application by integrating new components using module federation, allowing gradual migration without disrupting the entire system.

Module Federation 2.0 includes a TypeScript plugin that automatically extracts and shares type definitions from remote modules, ensuring type safety and enabling features like auto-complete in the host application.

Nataly Rocha
Nataly Rocha
20 min
21 Nov, 2024

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Video Summary and Transcription
Using front-end features can be challenging. Model federation is an approach to implement micro frontends. Micro frontends can be built-in or use runtimes. Two micro frontends need to update together to ensure consistency. Other techniques for micro frontends include web components, system.js, iframes, and monorepos. Model federation in Webpack 5 decouples runtime from build tools, allowing flexibility in model loading. High availability and error boundaries are important for Model Federation. Full-federated sites enable fast development cycles and easy testing. Importing components from a federated model requires dynamic imports, dependency sharing, and performance considerations. Debugging tools like Medusa and the Model Federation plugin for Chrome help identify and resolve issues. Consistent styling can be achieved by using the same UI kit. Routing can be handled by a shell application or frameworks like Single SPA. Decoupling components using specific federated models and considering tradeoffs when designing application growth strategies. Determine if Microfrontends are necessary based on the need for independent modular components in a growing product.
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