Drab.Live now sends only the changed parts of html, but it updates the whole part, regardless of the fact it was changed or not.
Shall we do the client-side diff of the htmls it is sending and update only the changed tags?
Pros: it will eliminate the issue with cleaning values of the form.
Cons: more complicated client JS.
These strategies aren’t mutually exclusive. You can send minimal diffs and merge them into the tags that have changed.
That way you get the best of both worlds: minimal amount id data dent over the wire and maximum flexibility in handling things like input tags whose value has changed.
But if you’re going to convert your HTML into strings to merge the whole thing, you could borrow from my PhoenixUndeadView, which I think you’ve been following. That might even simplify your architecture because you wouldn’t even need to insert dummy span tags and attributes. The cost of the simplification is to depend on a library such as morphdom, but at least it offloads the complexity to a project maintained by someone else.
EDIT: id there is a Drab.Live, why not a Drab.Undead? 
But do you plan on merging on creating a big string representing the DOMon the client and use something like morphdom to merge ir into the DOM or do you plan on using your dummy tags and only mergung inside the dummy tags?
If you want to build a big string and hen merge it afterwards you should definitely try my UndeadTemplates. They should be as optimized as possible without messing with the Elixir compiler. It’s completely untested, of course. I can get the changing parts in whatever format you need (probably a json array that the server can send to the browser). You might end up not using it, but I think you should try.
EDIT: at least try to get a feeling for how it’s implemented
EDIT2: we can discuss this over private message.
To integrate Undead Templates into Drab you need something like the following:
A render function to render the initial HTML (I already have that)
A function to render the top level static segments of the template; if there are static segments inside dynamic parts we can’t optimize those. This should be integrated in the function above so that it renders both the HTML and the static segments in a format such as JSON.
A function to send the (rendered) dynamic segments to the browser through a channel (as JSON or some other format)
Something on the browser to start channel listeners and stuff like that.
Something on the browser to receive the dynamic parts, concatenate them into a big string and merge it into the DOM.
I can code solutions for 1, 2 and 3 which you can plug directly unto whatever you’re doing.
I can probably also code something ridiculously inefficient for 4 and 5 based on what Drab already does
I will definitely take a look, but right now I am busy with the other stuff. Thanks for this anyway!
Hey, im getting a similar error deploying to Gigalixir as @makeitrein..
== Compilation error in file lib/bonus_web/views/user/offer_view.ex ==
** (CompileError) lib/bonus_web/templates/user/offer/index.html.drab: invalid quoted expression: %Drab.Live.Safe{partial: %Drab.Live.Partial{amperes: %{}, assigns: %{}, hash: "gezdaojsgaytamju", path: "lib/bonus_web/templates/user/offer/index.html.drab"}, safe: [{:__block__, [], [{:=, [], [{:tmp1, [], Drab.Live.EExEngine}, [{:__block__, [], [{:=, [], [{:tmp1, [], Drab.Live.EExEngine}, [["{{{{@drab-partial:gezdaojsgaytamju}}}}"], "\n\tvar countDownDate"]]}, [{:tmp1, [], Drab.Live.EExEngine}, {:case, [generated: true], [{{:., [line: 5], [{:offer, [line: 5], nil}, :id]}, [line: 5], []}, [do: [{:->, [generated: true], [[safe: {:data, [generated: true], Drab.Live.EExEngine}], {:data, [generated: true], Drab.Live.EExEngine}]}, {:->, [generated: true], [[{:when, [generated: true], [{:bin, [generated: true], Drab.Live.EExEngine}, {:is_binary, [generated: true, context: Drab.Live.EExEngine, import: Kernel], [{:bin, [generated: true], Drab.Live.EExEngine}]}]}], {{:., [generated: true], [{:__aliases__, [generated: true, alias: false], [:Plug, :HTML]}, :html_escape]}, [generated: true], [{:bin, [generated: true], Drab.Live.EExEngine}]}]}, {:->, [generated: true], [[{:other, [generated: true], Drab.Live.EExEngine}], {{:., [line: 5], [{:__aliases__, [line: 5, alias: false], [:Phoenix, :HTML, :Safe]}, :to_iodata]}, [line: 5], [{:other, [line: 5], Drab.Live.EExEngine}]}]}]]]}]]}, " = "]]}, [{:tmp1, [], Drab.Live.EExEngine}, {:case, [generated: true], [{{:., [line: 5], [{:__aliases__, [counter: 0, line: 5], [:DateTime]}, :to_unix]}, [line: 5], [{{:., [line: 5], [{:offer, [line: 5], nil}, :ending_datetime]}, [line: 5], []}, :milliseconds]}, [do: [{:->, [generated: true], [[safe: {:data, [generated: true], Drab.Live.EExEngine}], {:data, [generated: true], Drab.Live.EExEngine}]}, {:->, [generated: true], [[{:when, [generated: true], [{:bin, [generated: true], Drab.Live.EExEngine}, {:is_binary, [generated: true, context: Drab.Live.EExEngine, import: Kernel], [{:bin, [generated: true], Drab.Live.EExEngine}]}]}], {{:., [generated: true], [{:__aliases__, [generated: true, alias: false], [:Plug, :HTML]}, :html_escape]}, [generated: true], [{:bin, [generated: true], Drab.Live.EExEngine}]}]}, {:->, [generated: true], [[{:other, [generated: true], Drab.Live.EExEngine}], {{:., [line: 5], [{:__aliases__, [line: 5, alias: false], [:Phoenix, :HTML, :Safe]}, :to_iodata]}, [line: 5], [{:other, [line: 5], Drab.Live.EExEngine}]}]}]]]}]]}, "\n\t"]}
(phoenix) /tmp/build/lib/bonus_web/views/user/offer_view.ex:1: Phoenix.Template.__before_compile__/1
remote: Command '[u'docker', u'run', u'--rm', u'-e', u'GIGALIXIR_SHOULD_CLEAN_CACHE=False', u'-v', u'/tmp/tmpVn4ilG/key-burlywood-degu:/tmp/app', u'-v', u'/tmp/gigalixir/cache/key-burlywood-degu/:/tmp/cache', u'-v', u'/tmp/tmpVn4ilG/env:/tmp/env', u'--env=USER=www-data', u'us.gcr.io/gigalixir-152404/herokuish:latest']' returned non-zero exit status 1
Do we know of any way around this? not sure how to debug this either.
