1614502 - Add a mechanism for producing a static version of about:home periodically that can be cached for startup.

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Firefox :: New Tab Page, task, P2)

Description

[Mike Conley (:mconley) (:⚙️)]

react-dom-server allows one to take some React components and a state, and generate static mark-up that can be rendered by the browser. The React client libraries then know how to attach to these static mark-up, and "hydrate" it with more up-to-date state as it comes down.

A major component of bug 1614351 is to try to take the dynamically computed about:home, and render it to a string that can be flushed to the disk to be read on start-up. react-dom-server seems well suited to this, despite the fact that it was designed to run in server environments.

So a few things that we'd need to do here:

1. Is it possible to run react-dom-server in the browser environment? Even better, can it run in a Worker?
2. Are there any license restrictions or security concerns that would prevent us from bringing react-dom-server into the tree and relying on it?

I believe the Activity Stream attempted to do this a few years ago, so I'm interested in hearing about the challenges they ran into during the first attempt.

Comment 1

[Jessilyn Davis]

Marking as P2 to get it prioritized. Let us know if you'd like to P it differently depending on how you're organizing this work. Thanks!

:mconley - do you mind if we assign this bug to you so that it cleans up our triage/bug process for New Tab component?

Comment 2

[Mike Conley (:mconley) (:⚙️)]

Yeah, I'll take this.

Comment 3

[Mike Conley (:mconley) (:⚙️)]

It turns out that we already have react-dom-server in tree:

https://searchfox.org/mozilla-central/rev/2fd8ffcf087bc59a8e5c962965bbb7bf230bcd28/devtools/client/shared/vendor/react-dom-server.js

unfortunately, I don't think we can repurpose the current DevTools one, and we'll need to vendor in a distinct copy for about:home. See bug 1618001 about how we can have a single copy of the React libraries across the tree.

In the meantime, I'm going to re-purpose this bug. We know we can have react-dom-server in the tree. This bug will now be about landing it in-tree, and using it to construct a static document that can be cached using the mechanism introduced in bug 1621032.

Comment 4

[Mike Conley (:mconley) (:⚙️)]

Attachment: Bug 1614502 - Vendor react-dom-server into the newtab component. r?k88hudson!

Comment 5

[Mike Conley (:mconley) (:⚙️)]

Attachment: Bug 1614502 - Expose utility functions for rendering Activity Stream. r?Mardak!

Depends on D68092

Comment 6

[Mike Conley (:mconley) (:⚙️)]

Attachment: Bug 1614502 - Add a mechanism that can generate an about:home document for a startup cache. r?Gijs!,k88hudson!

Depends on D68093

Comment 7

[Mike Conley (:mconley) (:⚙️)]

ni?ing k88hudson for https://phabricator.services.mozilla.com/D68092#2107689

Comment 8

[Mike Conley (:mconley) (:⚙️)]

ni?ing Scott for https://phabricator.services.mozilla.com/D68094#2155627.

Comment 9

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by [e-mail]:
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/8bf3fe111c40
Vendor react-dom-server into the newtab component. r=k88hudson
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/7ec776d31a2c
Expose utility functions for rendering Activity Stream. r=Mardak
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/626dd2a045af
Add a mechanism that can generate an about:home document for a startup cache. r=Gijs,k88hudson

Comment 10

[Stefan Hindli [:stefan_hindli]]

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/8bf3fe111c40
https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/7ec776d31a2c
https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/626dd2a045af

Comment 11

[Scott [:thecount] Downe]

I provided the need-info directly to mconley in slack iirc.