Full Stack Web Frameworks #

Overview of How Web Apps Work #

Web Page

• An HTML document.
• Nowadays that implies CSS styling and possibly simple JS logic internal to the page.
• Static - if you reload, it’s the same unless manually updated.
• Associated with a specific URL.

Web Site

• A collection of web pages.
• Simplest case is a directory tree of HTML documents.

Static web server

• Gets an HTTP request with a path
• Reads file at path under the directory (“document root”)
• Sends that file to the requestor

Web Application

In the general case, a web application is a program that:

• Gets an HTTP request
• Uses arbitrary program logic to generate a response
• Frequently the program functions as a web server, although it could interface with an external web server in some other way instead
• That’s very open ended. A web framework provides some structure.

Common Framework Elements

• Router
• Controller
• ORM
• Template
• Asset Pipeline

Admin Interlude #

• Task: Sign up for Github
• Attendence

What do we want in a framework #

• Provides good support for application logic on a web server.
• Interface to a relational (SQL) database. Must support (SQLite or H2) and (PostgreSQL or MariaDB).
  • Migrations: A way to change DB schema in flight.
• Separation between business logic (e.g. models, controllers) and page rendering (e.g. templates).
• A way to manage in-browser assets - JS and CSS - preferably with standard NPM modules and some sort of asset build system.

Example Frameworks #

• Python / Django
• Ruby on Rails
• Next JS
• Remix JS
• Scala / Lift
• This semester: Elixir / Phoenix

Start Up a Phoenix project #