When it comes to cloud applications, a dynamic and responsive UX is a high priority for any development team. That's why single page applications (SPAs) have become a top choice for any teams designing a web application with their user base in mind. They're especially popular with programming teams who work in ASP.NET Core, the development framework used to build web applications with ease.
Single page applications are often built and designed in frameworks that are free and open-source, and they make for an efficient development cycle while retaining that smooth user experience SPAs are known for. In this article, we'll explore single page application solutions like Angular and why they're fantastic for ASP.NET Core developers.
What is a single page application?
Websites and cloud applications with dynamic content that users can interact with need a way to update page content without completely loading new pages from scratch. That's where single page applications come in handy. Instead of requesting an entirely new page from the server when a user clicks on a site's button or media, SPAs load only a single HTML page and updates that page's content in response to what the user interacts with.
The important part is that SPAs only load the content that needs to update when prompted by the user's action. This makes the site load much faster, decreases buffering, and reduces processing for extraneous page elements. Most websites or applications that rely on user input or have media playback are single page applications. These applications can range from email clients like Gmail to streaming platforms like Netflix.
Why use SPAs in ASP.NET Core?
ASP.NET Core's open-source flexibility and great performance capabilities as a framework makes for a perfect environment for building single page applications. Here are a few advantages to combining ASP.NET Core and SPAs:
- Scalability: ASP.NET Core is a productive framework to build microservices and APIs that are perfectly suited for large-scale single page application architecture.
- Compatibility: It's easy for developers to use ASP.NET Core to create SPAs that work seamlessly on any operating system or interface without any disruptions. It can serve static files, HTTP and REST APIs, and has options for working with gRPC and GraphQL.
- Compartmentalization: There's a good workload division during runtime, as ASP.NET Core can handle backend logic effectively while the SPA architecture covers the UI and other frontend elements.
- Optimization: There are many great ways to optimize and streamline SPAs in ASP.NET Core. For instance, you can implement server-side caching, cut down on server HTTP requests, use client-side throttling, and use content delivery networks to maximize SPA performance in the ASP.NET Core environment.
- Security: ASP.NET Core is known for its versatility when it comes to access control capabilities. You can protect your single page applications using reliable authentication tools like ASP.NET Core Identity, OAuth, or OpenID Connect. It's easy to create custom authentication settings for your SPAs in ASP.NET Core too.
Top SPA solutions for ASP.NET Core developers
Now that we've touched on some basics for using ASP.NET Core to manage SPAs, let's go over the top SPA frameworks that are well-suited for ASP.NET Core developers.
Angular
Angular is a TypeScript-based framework developed by Google with SPAs in mind. It's well-known for powerful tools like dependency injection, two-way data binding, and a comprehensive API for CLI building. It's a great development platform for any web-facing applications and content, seeing as Angular is designed with scalability, SEO and accessibility in mind.
Advantages for ASP.NET Core devs:
- Template integration: Every part of Angular's architecture has an HTML template, all of which integrate effortlessly with Visual Studio given that Microsoft provides an Angular SPA template with ASP.NET Core.
- Cross-platform development: Angular lets developers access projects from many different interfaces and offers similar access to tools from most supported platforms.
- Ecosystem and support: Angular's dev community is millions strong, not to mention the framework receives regular security updates and dedicated support from Google. This two-fold backing makes the framework a favorite amongst developers.
- Angular CLI: The CLI provided by Angular is a fantastic way to streamline development and effectively sequence project tasks. Every version of Angular past v8 provides their CLI Builder API for those who want to take the existing Angular CLI and run with it.
React
React, created by Meta, is a component-based JavaScript library focused on building interactive user experiences. Its virtual DOM and unidirectional data flow make it ideal for creating fast and responsive UIs. React's ecosystem includes tools like Redux (state management) and React Router (routing), and is intended to be used with client libraries for the latter. It's a simple yet versatile framework that's perfect for fine-turning SPA design.
Advantages for ASP.NET Core devs:
- Virtual DOM: React's virtual document object model makes HTML page rendering much quicker and streamlines testing in development stages as well. The React architecture also relies on the virtual DOM to update the actual DOM, which saves time and improves performance, too.
- Library compatibility: React meshes well with the libraries offered in the ASP.NET Core environment, which makes it an essential tool when working on UI and other frontend projects for SPAs.
- JavaScript malleability: React's components are essentially JavaScript functions, with its syntax being a JavaScript extension (JSX). As a result, the different components are easy to improve and maintain when coupled with the relevant rendering logic.
- Reusability: If developers build a component once, they won't have to do so again because React components manage their own state and can be assembled in other UI architecture after they're initially established.
Vue.js
Vue.js is yet another SPA framework that relies on JavaScript and focuses on UI development for SPAs. It's well-known for its simplicity and approachable learning curve, and strives to combine the easy integration of Angular with the flexibility of React. Vue.js supports extending HTML with attributes that provide functionality to HTML applications, and emphasizes GUI construction and other frontend single page application work.
Advantages for ASP.NET Core devs:
- Scalable ecosystem: Vue.js can be used with only a set of libraries, or it can be wielded as a comprehensive development framework for SPAs. This adjustability makes Vue.js a robust choice for UI projects of any scale, and many ASP.NET Core devs take advantage of its versatile nature for this reason.
- Routing solutions: SPAs struggle to share links directing to subpages within a specific web page that has interactive components. That's why Vue.js has an interface that changes the page display based on the URL path without considering how the display was changed. Vue's open-source routing package includes an API that updates the URL appropriately, which is an intuitive solution to a common SPA problem.
- User-friendly: Vue.js serves as a way of adding onto standard HTML, CSS and JavaScript with APIs that give developers creative capabilities with SPAs. It also offers multiple API styles and provides a breadth of guides and tools to programmers that are new to SPA frameworks.
Svelte
Svelte is a web development framework that is used for UI as it pertains to web applications. It features a compiler for turning components written in HTML and CSS into JavaScript. This cuts down on build time and eliminates the need for a virtual DOM. Its provided framework also features smaller bundle sizes, which directly translates to less resource use and smaller file sizes. Along with Vue.js, Svelte is praised for being intuitive and easy to learn, which makes it a great SPA framework for programmers of any skill level.
Advantages for ASP.Net Core devs:
- Integrated state management: Svelte mitigates the resources needed to handle application states by providing a state management solution. It easily creates and compartmentalizes reactive and deep states based on which UI components of an SPA are intended to be interactive.
- Custom compiler structure: Svelte uses symbols called runes that work similarly to functions in a given programming language, and they're used to control its compiler for state changes or otherwise. This custom structure allows developers to execute complex tasks that wouldn't be feasible without an integrated compiler.
- SvelteKit: In addition to their base service that writes and manages UI components, Svelte also offers SvelteKit, which is a framework that provides a macro view of web application development. It offers basic architectural functions such as a router, but SvelteKit also has an extensive list of features including build optimizations, offline support, page preloading, and more.
Want to learn more?
Learn more about Duende Backend for Frontend (BFF), which allows you to manage tokens on the server - not in the browser - to simplify front-end development and increase security for Angular, React, Vue, and Blazor WASM single page application (SPA) apps.