Pyodide Boilerplate Idea

[Norcim133]

Stlite is great for getting Python to WASM via Streamlit.

There is a lot of power, in particular, running a custom React component in Stlite via Streamlit.

Recently, I tried to use pure React + Pyodide to start replicating what I'd done in Streamlit. I wanted it more like a traditional React frontend with Python backend but in WASM.

Pyodide does not make it easy or intuitive to access a complex Python backend from a React front. Maybe it is just a docs issue?

Pyodide works well with Python snippets but, for snippets, I might as well use JS. If I am trying this hard to use Python, it's because I have a bunch of logic. Once there is a lot of python logic, snippets get awkward.

One issue might be that Pyodide takes a frontend style where devs are used to alternating between JS, HTML, React, CSS, in the same codeblock... Python calls might not seem that different.

For a Python dev trying awkwardly to adopt React we probably want:

1. An easy way to import our python project directory on the React side
2. An interface for calling python functions
3. The ability of our various python methods to find each other easily

If it helps explain the issue, here is a recent blog on the pyodide site that gives a feel for what is (and is not) currently possible.

So, this is not an idea for Stlite. This is an idea for a new project that makes it easier to get a Python backend working in a React-first setup.