Developing Single-Page Web Applications

In this course, students learn how to build interactive, single-page applications (SPAs) and interfaces for the web. An SPA is a special classification of a website or web application in which the user can navigate between different screens without loading a new web page. Instead, new content may be accessed directly from the server using an application programming interface (API). This results in performance improvements and a more dynamic experience. Well-constructed SPAs include a rich user interface to provide a seamless interactive user experience. Two well-known examples of SPAs are Gmail and Twitter, which both provide dynamic page views without the need to reload the page. SPAs can be created with Javascript as well as various frameworks including React, Angular, Node.js, and Vue.js. We explore the pros and cons of SPAs, as well as their effective design. We explore several technologies in the course including JavaScript ECMAScript 6, React, JSON, and APIs, as well as mechanisms involved in SPA development such as components, routing, and state management. This hands-on course includes many coding assignments to help students master the techniques used to build an SPA, culminating in a final project to build a comprehensive single-page web application.