7 Reasons Why You Should Learn Alpine JS in 2024

4 min readDec 16, 2023

Let me guess. You’re a beginner web developer who is trying very hard to learn vanilla JS so that you can use basic interactions in your web projects. But you’re frustrated by the complexity of it. So, you’re searching for an easier alternative. Or maybe you’re a seasoned web developer who wants to learn something new and add a new JS library to your portfolio. Either way, Alpine JS is a great choice.

Vanilla JS is very hard to master. Trust me on this because I made 2 failed attempts to learn it in 3 years before learning it successfully. Although even yet, I am not very confident with it. It will feel very confusing until you understand it to your core. Before then, you’ll have to do lots of googling to find the solution to small and simple problems. Then, you will have difficulty integrating someone else’s code into your project. Hey, there is nothing to be ashamed of! We all do that. That’s how Stack Overflow survives.

But in our day-to-day web projects, we have no choice but to use any kind of JavaScript. Without it, we can’t add the basic interactions that a website or app needs. For example, a responsive navigation menu, an accordion, or a tab. So, without using JavaScript, a webpage will look like a Google Doc, or maybe MS Word, or any of that kind in that matter.

That’s why we can’t ignore JavaScript. But vanilla JS isn’t the solution we can use right away before spending 6 months learning it.

Oh, wait! We can use jQuery instead. But no. It’s heavy, it’s slow, and more importantly, it’s dead. Even the Bootstrap 5 kicked it out.

So, the best option we have out there now is Alpine JS. It’s a minimalistic and simple JavaScript framework designed for front-end applications. It was created by Caleb Porzio in 2019 & gained quick popularity because of its simplicity.

Here are 7 reasons why you should learn it:

1. Best for small projects:

Currently, it is the best JavaScript framework to work with small projects like static websites. As it’s only 6.4kb zipped, it doesn’t add much to the overall size of your project. So, it’s good for static websites to keep the page load time minimum for a good user experience.

2. No build steps:

There are no build steps, unlike larger JavaScript frameworks. You can just put a CDN and start with the development process. This avoids complexity.

3. Faster coding:

As you can add Alpine JS directly to your HTML, you don’t need to jump between your HTML, CSS & JS files. It saves time during development. This also keeps your codes clean and minimal and reduces the file size.

4. Easier to learn:

Alpine JS is incredibly easy to learn. If you are familiar with other frameworks or with vanilla JS, you can start Alpine JS in no time. If you are a complete newbie, it won’t take more than a few hours to get familiar with it.

5. Community support:

There are lots of resources available out there that can help you with Alpine JS. If you want to learn it from scratch, or if you get stuck during a project, you will most likely find a tutorial or post related to it.

6. You can fetch and async easily

Alpine JS isn’t designed for full-stack application development. But you can easily fetch data from an API using Alpine JS. It makes the process super easy.

7. Alpine JS is extendable

Alpine JS isn’t limited to its core directives and functionalities. You can create your own custom directive using the Alpine.directive function.

This is how you can create a new directive:

Alpine.directive('uppercase', el => {
    el.textContent = el.textContent.toUpperCase()
})

And this is how you can apply it with your HTML:

<div x-data>
    <span x-uppercase>Hello World!</span>
</div>

The text will be displayed as “HELLO WORLD” on your browser.

I created a course on Alpine JS where I explained the basics and added 10 easy-to-follow practical projects that you can use right away on your real-world web projects. Check it out:

Alpine JS Masterclass: Learn Alpine.JS with 10 Cool Projects

(You will get a 30-day money-back guarantee if you don’t find it helpful.)

Let’s create a tooltip using Alpine JS:

Now we are going to create a simple tooltip using Alpine JS. There will be a button, and when we hover on it, the tooltip text is going to show up.

The HTML with Alpine JS:

<div x-data="{ tooltip: false}" class="tooltip">
     <!-- tooltip button -->
     <button x-on:mouseover="tooltip = true" x-on:mouseleave="tooltip = false">
          Hover me!
     </button>
     <!-- tooltip text-->
     <div class="tooltip-text" x-show="tooltip">
          This is a tooltip!
     </div>
</div>

Now let’s add some CSS to design the tooltip & the button:

button {
    padding: 12px 25px;
    font-weight: 600;
    border-radius: 5px;
    font-size: 15px;
    cursor: pointer;
    border: 2px solid rgba(185, 185, 185, .4);
}

button:hover {
    background-color: #d4d4d4;
}

.tooltip {
    position: relative;
}

.tooltip-text {
    position: absolute;
    width: 120px;
    bottom: 120%;
    background-color: black;
    color: white;
    font-size: 13px;
    padding: 10px;
    border-radius: 4px;
    text-align: center;
    z-index: 1;
}

.tooltip-text::after {
    content: '';
    position: absolute;
    border: 5px solid;
    border-color: black transparent transparent transparent;
    top: 100%;
    left: 50%;
    margin-left: -5px;
}

You can try it out by creating a pen at codepen.io

Conclusion:

In short, If you do simple front-end web development projects, you should definitely give Alpine JS a try. It’s easy, tiny & definitely sweet! But if you work with complex web apps and huge websites, try large frameworks like React, Vue or Angular.