Millions of businesses exchange information on the internet and to interact with their target audience. This helps them make fast and secure transactions over the web. However, business goals can be achieved when the businesses are able to store all this data for the means of presenting quality output to the end users.
Simply put, in the development industry a web application (or “web app”) is more like a program that uses a web browser to handle the storage and retrieval of the information to present information to the users. This allows a user to interact with the company using the online forms, e-shopping carts, CMS, etc. Some more examples of web applications are online banking, online polls, online forums, online reservations, shopping cart, and interactive games.
Learning about web development is kind of like having too many things on a plate. This blog serves as a way to get your acquainted with the world of web app development.
In this blog, I’ll cover the concept of modern web app development, best programming languages to use, and additional resources for businesses who want to know more about custom web application development for business benefit.
Keep reading to dive into web app development!
Kotlin Ktor for Web App Development:
Most of the developers now use Kotlin to build web apps. Kotlin is concise, clear, and has a friendly syntax to learn. In addition, Kotlin offers a myriad of useful features that ease everyday development tasks that is something not offered by any other language. This will speed up development time while keeping your codebase easier to execute and more maintainable. Besides the mentioned advantages, there’s also Kotlin Ktor a library for building creative web applications.
The following code will run embedded web server on localhost:8080 and will install routing and responds with Hello, world! when receiving GET http request for root path:
import io.ktor.server.netty.*
import io.ktor.routing.*
import io.ktor.application.*
import io.ktor.http.*
import io.ktor.response.*
import io.ktor.server.engine.*
fun main(args: Array<String>) {
embeddedServer(Netty, 8080) {
routing {
get("/") {
call.respondText("Hello, world!", ContentType.Text.Html)
}
}
}.start(wait = true)
}
Ktor provides a tool for quickly creating web applications with Kotlin. Whatever type of hosting you choose, Ktor will make heavy use of Kotlin coroutines, so that it’s implemented 100% asynchronously and mainly non-blocking. Ktor library is pretty light-weight and can be extensible through a plugin mechanism.
One of the greatest advantages associated with Kotlin Ktor is its ability to provide type-safe builders known as Domain-Specific Languages (DSL). Ktor also makes use of such DSLs that allow a user to define the web app’s endpoints in a very precise way.
Modern Web Application Frameworks:
Frameworks like Ruby on Rails, Angular, Django, Ember.js, Express, MeteorJS allow developers to build and maintain complex web applications following a fast and efficient approach. It is good to hire dedicated web app programmers to edit the app interface and make design without facing technical issues. Web application frameworks are designed to streamline the programming process and promote codes by setting up libraries, app structure, documentation, and guidelines.
Angular
Released by Google, Angular is one of the best JavaScript frameworks for web application development. It is a front-end system that is popular among the web app developers as it allows broadening the vocabulary of HTML for web application development.
Django
Django is based on the MVT model. For most cases, complex and information-based websites and web apps are made utilizing Django structure. The framework gives better performance and safety efforts when it comes to passwords and client accounts.
Ember.js
Ember.js is the best platform for structuring business web applications. Web app programmers attempt their hands with Ember.js for creating single-page web applications.
Ruby on Rails
Ruby on rails is a broadly popular web application framework that is based on the push-based MVC engineering. The Ruby on Rails system is open-source, allowed to utilize the Linux platform.
It is an ideal and elegant web development solution to create amazing websites. Some of the most famous apps built using Ruby on rails are named as Basecamp, Airbnb, Github, Dribble, Fiverr, Crazy egg, Whitepages and Goodreads.
«Here Document» refers to build strings from multiple lines. Following a << you can specify a string or an identifier to terminate the string literal, and all lines following the current line up to the terminator are the value of the string.
If the terminator is quoted, the type of quotes determines the type of the line-oriented string literal. Notice there must be no space between << and the terminator.
#!/usr/bin/ruby -w
print <<EOF
This is the first way of creating
here document ie. multiple line string.
EOF
print <<"EOF"; # same as above
This is the second way of creating
here document ie. multiple line string.
EOF
print <<`EOC` # execute commands
echo hi there
echo lo there
EOC
print <<"foo", <<"bar" # you can stack them
I said foo.
foo
I said bar.
barThis will produce the following result:
This is the first way of creating
her document ie. multiple line string.
This is the second way of creating
her document ie. multiple line string.
hi there
lo there
I said foo.
I said bar.Express
Express is based on Node.js web application server system. This is sufficiently perfect to fabricate multi-page apps, websites, and web applications.
MeteorJS
Meteor is also one of the best full-stack JavaScript frameworks to develop single-page web applications. It is an open-source system that is isomorphic in nature. It allows JavaScript to run both on the server-side and the customer side.
Latest Web Application Technologies:
Developing a web application or a website typically needs 3 to 5 main technologies: JavaScript, CSS, HTML, Ajax, JQuery, and Dojo Toolkit. It sounds quite complex, but once you have the understanding of these web technologies and the way they work it becomes significantly easier for you. Presenting here with an introduction to the latest web technologies list hoping it will make things a bit easier for you. Let’s take a look.
JavaScript
JavaScript is a front end programming language used for developing websites, web apps, and games. JavaScript runs on all browsers and supports both functional and object-oriented programming. It is basically best to go for making excellent quality user interfaces, websites, and web apps that look super nice.
Dynamic module import is one of the new features in Javascript as shown below:
const main = document.querySelector("main");
for (const link of document.querySelectorAll("nav > a")) {
link.addEventListener("click", e => {
e.preventDefault();
import(`./section-modules/${link.dataset.entryModule}.js`)
.then(module => {
module.loadPageInto(main);
})
.catch(err => {
main.textContent = err.message;
});
});
}This will allow developers to get full control on how modules get loaded in an app. It catches up the error scenarios and boosts performance by not loading code.
Optional chaining is another good feature in JavaScript which allows developers to call properties from an object without exploding everything. You can do this like below:
var lang = {
en: "English",
es: "Español",
fr: "Français"
}
console.log(lang.pt.words) CSS / HTML
JavaScript is CSS and HTML together they create a group of three front end web development tools. HTML (HyperText Mark-Up Language) is the language of web browsers used to make websites. CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) make your website and web app look cool than those awful apps from the early days of the web.
It’s important for businesses to look for web application developers on hire to know about these technologies inside out that will be pretty helpful for you as you can understand how changes in the web apps affect the end-user and development process.
JQuery
Web app developers use JQuery to add required functionality to web applications they create. JQuery is a useful tool that offers a great level of flexibility and power to web application developers.
This is one of the popular most technologies among web developers because of its simplicity and ease of use. One of the main benefits of using JQuery is the fact it deals with cross-browser issues and bugs that you would face while developing the process of web application development.
AJAX
AJAX stands for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML. AJAX is not a programming language or a tool, it is a client-side script that communicates to and from a server/database without the need to follow the process of submitting a web page to the server for processing or a complete page refresh. Ajax is the method of exchanging data with a server and updating parts of a web app without reloading the entire pages of a web app.
How to load jQuery from the local server & using the ajax() function?
<%@ Page Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeBehind="APICall.aspx.cs" Inherits="WebApplication1.APICall" %>
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head runat="server">
<title></title>
<script src="jquery-1.7.1.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script>
$(document).ready(function () {
$("#Save").click(function () {
var person = new Object();
person.name = $('#name').val();
person.surname = $('#surname').val();
$.ajax({
url: 'http://localhost:3413/api/person',
type: 'POST',
dataType: 'json',
data: person,
success: function (data, textStatus, xhr) {
console.log(data);
},
error: function (xhr, textStatus, errorThrown) {
console.log('Error in Operation');
}
});
});
});
</script>
</head>
<body>
<form id="form1">
Name :- <input type="text" name="name" id="name" />
Surname:- <input type="text" name="surname" id="surname" />
<input type="button" id="Save" value="Save Data" />
</form>
</body>
</html> Above is the implementation of the client-side code where we have configured the ajax() method to communicate with the JSON data. Here, we need to form the data in the object format.
Dojo Toolkit
The most popular JavaScript utility is the Dojo Toolkit. While nearly every JavaScript toolkit promises to make things easier for you, the Dojo Toolkit make it true for you. Its modularity will be the key to keeping your web application development fast, maintainable, and prominent.
dojo/dom & dojo/dom-construct are Dojo's basic modules used for HTML DOM manipulation. You need to code like below to load these modules and thus using the functionality they are providing:
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="utf-8">
<title>Tutorial: Hello myDojo!</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1 id="greeting">Hello</h1>
<!-- load Dojo -->
<script src="//ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/dojo/1.10.4/dojo/dojo.js"
data-dojo-config="async: true"></script>
<script>
require([
'dojo/dom',
'dojo/dom-construct'
], function (dom, domConstruct) {
var greetingNode = dom.byId('greeting');
domConstruct.place('<em> Dojo!</em>', greetingNode);
});
</script>
</body>
</html>Dojo Toolkit offers fantastic layouts that include a range of incredible features. The Digit UI also comes with the advanced quality widgets for better layout functionality. Dojo also offers high-performance implementations of a range of popular utilities and offers a simple and lightweight toolkit that is extremely fast and streamlined.
New Web Application Development Models:
Multiple teams are engaged in the development process of web applications. Each organization may set its own unique style of the development process. Some companies follow a standard model SDLC (System Development Lifecycle) and some follow Agile Software Development Model. Let’s know about both the processes in detail:
SDLC Model
SDLC is the process of developing software or web applications including the steps to identify and define the application requirements, architectural design, analysis of information, programming, and testing.
Agile Model
The process of agile web application development is a type of iterative development process that focuses on the collaboration of teams or people involved in the process of web app development. It provides a better way to allow checking, revision, and analysis of web application requirements. The agile methodology includes the following steps — research, analysis, project management, design, programming, implementation, testing, adaptation, and maintenance.
Final Words:
Today web applications have a substantial impact on the way companies work. Businesses need to reinvent and implement new technologies before the development of any web application.
Modern businesses need to take advantage of the new technologies to have flexibility and versatility in their process of custom web application development. Or, they can contact web application development companies or hire web app developers to take their app development work in a new direction in order to compete in the new market, new trends, and global marketplace.