In this first part of the book we summarize the Web's foundations and show how to build a front-end web application using plain JavaScript and the Local Storage API. It shows how to build such an app with minimal effort, not using any (third-party) framework or library. A front-end web app can be provided by any web server, as depicted in Figure 1 but all parts of its code are executed on the user's computer device (smartphone, tablet or notebook), and not on the remote web server. Typically, but not necessarily, a front-end web app is a single-user application, which is not shared with other users.
The minimal version of a JavaScript front-end data management application discussed in this tutorial book only includes a minimum of the overall functionality required for a complete app. It takes care of only one object type ("books") and supports the four standard data management operations (Create/Retrieve/Update/Delete), but it needs to be enhanced by styling the user interface with CSS rules, and by adding further important parts of the app's overall functionality.
If you are already familiar with HTML, XML and JavaScript, you may skip the first two chapters and immediately start developing a minimal web application by going to Chapter 3.
Table of Contents
- 1. A Quick Tour of the Foundations of Web Apps
- 2. More on JavaScript
- 3. A Minimal Web App with Plain JS
- 1. Step 1 - Set up the Folder Structure
- 2. Step 2 - Write the Model Code
- 3. Step 3 - Initialize the Application
- 4. Step 4 - Implement the Create Use Case
- 5. Step 5 - Implement the Retrieve/List All Use Case
- 6. Step 6 - Implement the Update Use Case
- 7. Step 7 - Implement the Delete Use Case
- 8. Possible Variations and Extensions
- 9. Points of Attention
- 10. Quiz Questions
- 11. Practice Projects