Venkata Keerti Kotaru - Building Offline Applications with Angular: Develop Reliable, Performant Web Applications for Desktop and Mobile Platforms

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Congratulations on beginning to read a new book. This book will help you learn and build modern web applications with Angular and TypeScript. Even if you are a beginner in JavaScript and Angular technologies, the book provides step-by-step instructions to easily follow along with and build next-generation web applications. It presents you with a consistent use case across the book. You will build a few pages for Web Arcade, an imaginary online arcade.

The book primarily focuses on building an application that is resilient to changes in network connectivity. Traditionally, web applications work well when online, but they can crash badly if the connectivity is lost. A decade ago, most applications operated on wired connections or on relatively stable WiFi networks. Connectivity was not a factor. Today, applications run on a variety of networks with varying connectivity and speed. Users expect data not to be lost while they are on the move switching between networks. The advent of new web technologies allows developers to build applications that provide better user experiences. Through the course of this book, you will learn about these aspects with the help of a single use case, Web Arcade.

The book provides step-by-step instructions to get started with an Angular application and add progressive web app and service worker features, and it explores the different configurations. It helps you learn how to build installable web applications with little effort.

Next, the book provides instructions to cache data in IndexedDB. It details the JavaScript API for creating and managing data in the database running on the browsers client machine. Finally, you will learn how to use Dexie.js, which is a wrapper for the IndexedDB API, to simplify the implementation.

Throughout the chapters in the book, you will work through Web Arcade scenarios, which begin with a simple Angular component for rolling dice. You will see how to build pages that list games, navigate to the details of a game, and add comments on a game. You will learn how to build these pages that work even when network connectivity is lost. You will also build features that create data offline. For example, users will be able to add comments while offline and synchronize once the connectivity is restored.

We are glad you picked up this book. Happy learning.

Welcome! Congratulations on picking this book to learn how to build offline applications with Angular. This introductory chapter sets the expectations and framework for the book. It provides a brief look at traditional web application development and why creating just another traditional web application is not enough.

This book provides some perspective and elaborates on cutting-edge features like service workers and IndexedDB. It provides step-by-step instructions for creating an Angular application and incrementally adding features to build a sophisticated web application. The book uses an imaginary online gaming system, Web Arcade, to illustrate the techniques. It acts as a use case for building a modern web application that is resilient to network connectivity drops and speed changes.