Single Page Application Patterns

Hi folks, welcome back to Web Dev Distilled.

In this article, let’s have a high-level overview of Single Page Application Patterns.

There’re so many patterns out there, in this article, I will cover a few very popular ones that you might face when building your web apps.

Definition

Type of web application that interacts with the user by dynamically rewriting the current web page with new data from the web server, instead of loading entire new pages.

Let’s get into the first SPA pattern.

1) Lazy Load

• Problem: we have to load too many JavaScript files when the app loads leading to PERFORMANCE and MEMORY USAGE PROBLEMS.

• Solution: Use Dynamic Imports from ECMAScript to load modules when needed.

• Use Cases:

  • Load web components when you need them.

  • Load routes in SPA when you access them for the first time. In other words, you only load the components related to the page when user goes to that page.

2) View Transitions

• Problem: When changing between routes, there are no transitions as in most apps.

• Solution: Use the new View Transition API.

• Use Cases:

  • Animate page change

  • Morph elements between pages

3) Routing Metadata

• Problem: When working with SPA, we want the web pages metadata, such as title, SEO data, and other information to stay static, no matter the current URL.

• Solution: Update the metadata dynamically when the route changes.

• Use Cases:

  • Adapt the theme-color

  • Change the title

  • Update favicon based on the current page

4) HTML Templates with Interpolation

• Problem: When using templates for Web Components, you can’t express in HTML the bindings you want.

• Solution: Use a trick using ES string template that will let us interpolate with dynamic data from the HTML.

• Use Cases:

  • Define in HTML the bindings for the data.

Reference Source: https://firt.dev/