Book Image

Progressive Web Apps with React

By : Domes
Book Image

Progressive Web Apps with React

By: Domes

Overview of this book

For years, the speed and power of web apps has lagged behind native applications. Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) aim to solve this by bridging the gap between the web apps and native apps, delivering a host of exciting features. Simultaneously, React is fast becoming the go-to solution for building modern web UIs, combining ease of development with performance and capability. Using React alongside PWA technology will make it easy for you to build a fast, beautiful, and functional web app. After an introduction and brief overview of the goals of PWAs, the book moves on to setting up the application structure. From there, it covers the Webpack build process and the process of creating React components. You'll learn how to set up the backend database and authentication solution to communicate with Firebase and how to work with React Router. Next, you will create and configure your web app manifest, making your PWA installable on mobile devices. Then you'll get introduced to service workers and see how they work as we configure the app to send push notifications using Firebase Cloud Messaging. We'll also explore the App Shell pattern, a key concept in PWAs and look at its advantages regarding efficient performance. Finally, you'll learn how to add of?ine capabilities to the app with caching and confirm your progress by auditing your PWA with Lighthouse. Also, you'll discover helper libraries and shortcuts that will help you save time and understand the future of PWA development.
Table of Contents (15 chapters)

The plan

We've now arrived at the point where our application is technically working (in that we allow users to log in) but is lacking in real, useful content. It's time to change that.

To do so, however, we need to add additional pages to our application. Some of you may have heard the term Single-Page Application (SPA), which is used to refer to React apps and therefore may be confused by this talk of more pages. We'll cover that distinction as we move further on, and then move into our actual routing setup using React Router.

Here's what we'll learn:

  • How to install and use React Router v4
  • How to add additional routes to additional components
  • How to move between routes