Concurent multi-user editing?

[phifuh]

I am curious to know if u guys think nicegui would be a good choice for collaborative/concurent multi-user editing?

We have an upcoming project and my idea was to research if it would be possible to implement with a simple kubernetes cluster, mongodb, nicegui/fastapi.

The platform needs to support:

• Multiple authors editing the same "template/document"
• Real-time feedback and commenting between authors and reviewers
• Rich text editing
• Version control of document state

The biggest unknown for me is how to handle multiple users typing in the same "document" simultaneously. Specifically:

1. Real-time sync between sessions. What's the best pattern for pushing changes from User A's session to User B's UI?
2. Optimistic locking vs. real-time collaboration — Is anyone doing true real-time co-editing in NiceGUI, or is the practical approach more like "lock the section while someone edits it"?

Any experience, examples, or even "don't do it" warnings are appreciated. Thanks!

[rodja]

I would love to see collaborative editing in NiceGUI. There are several JS libraries which could be utilized. Quit some time ago, I had a closer look at https://codemirror.net/examples/collab/ but never found the time to integrate it. See #2913 (comment) or #2913 (comment).

[falkoschindler]

I found a way to enhance our codemirror.js in such a way that collaborative editing basically works out of the box. PR incoming.

[falkoschindler]

See PR #5775.

[phifuh]

@falkoschindler is it possible to hook up the WYSIWYG toolbar from the ui.editor() to the ui.codemirror() element? The usecase is geared towards non-technical personal and it would be great to solve 2 issues with one js lib and ui element i guess.

[falkoschindler]

No, that's not really feasible — they're fundamentally different editor architectures. ui.editor is Quasar's QEditor, a contenteditable-based WYSIWYG editor that works with HTML. ui.codemirror is CodeMirror 6, a code editor that works with plain text. You can't swap toolbars between them.

For non-technical users who need rich text collaboration, there are two realistic paths:

1. Markdown in CodeMirror: Use ui.codemirror with language='Markdown'. Users write Markdown (which is simple enough for non-technical people), and you get collaborative editing for free with the approach from PR Preserve cursor position when calling ui.codemirror.set_value #5775. You could render a live preview alongside the editor.

2. Dedicated rich text CRDT library: Integrate something like Tiptap + Yjs via a custom NiceGUI element. Tiptap is a headless rich text editor with built-in Yjs collaboration support and a customizable toolbar. This is more work but gives you true Google Docs-style co-editing.

[phifuh]

any name suggestion for (2)?

I am considering ui.multi_editor, ui.shared_editor, ui.richtext_sync ?