Book Image

Progressive Web Application Development by Example

By : Chris Love
Book Image

Progressive Web Application Development by Example

By: Chris Love

Overview of this book

Are you a developer that wants to create truly cross-platform user experiences with a minimal footprint, free of store restrictions and features customers want? Then you need to get to grips with Progressive Web Applications (PWAs), a perfect amalgamation of web and mobile applications with a blazing-fast response time. Progressive Web Application Development by Example helps you explore concepts of the PWA development by enabling you to develop three projects, starting with a 2048 game. In this game, you will review parts of a web manifest file and understand how a browser uses properties to define the home screen experience. You will then move on to learning how to develop and use a podcast client and be introduced to service workers. The application will demonstrate how service workers are registered and updated. In addition to this, you will review a caching API so that you have a firm understanding of how to use the cache within a service worker, and you'll discover core caching strategies and how to code them within a service worker. Finally, you will study how to build a tickets application, wherein you’ll apply advanced service worker techniques, such as cache invalidation. Also, you'll learn about tools you can use to validate your applications and scaffold them for quality and consistency. By the end of the book, you will have walked through browser developer tools, node modules, and online tools for creating high-quality PWAs.
Table of Contents (12 chapters)

The Service Worker Life Cycle

The service worker life cycle is one of the most important concepts you must master in order to create proper service workers. This part of the service worker discipline is often overlooked and leads to many questions and frustrations expressed on sites such as Stack Overflow. But mastering the service worker life cycle allows you to seamlessly register and update service workers.

I think developers overlook the life cycle because it is not obvious until they hit an obstacle due to not understanding the service worker lifespan. The issue that confuses most developers is when a service worker becomes active.

Service workers obey a known life cycle that allows a new service worker to get itself ready without disrupting the current one. The life cycle is designed for the best user experience.

When a service worker is registered, it does not immediately...