An example SPA project

What we need now is to conceive a suitable test case scenario similar to the ones we will eventually have to deal with – an example SPA project with all the core aspects we would expect from a potentially shippable product.

In order to do this, the first thing we need to do is to become our own customer for a minute and come up with an idea, a vision to share with our other self. We’ll then be able to put our developer shoes back on and split our abstract plan into a list of items we’ll need to implement; these items will be the core requirements of our project. Finally, we’ll set up our workstation by getting the required packages, adding the resource files, and configuring both the ASP.NET and Angular frameworks in the Visual Studio IDE.

Not your usual Hello World!

The code we’re going to write within this book won’t be just a shallow demonstration of full-stack development concepts; we won’t throw some working code here and there and expect you to connect the dots. Our objective is to create solid, realistic web applications – with server-side web APIs and client-side UIs – using the frameworks we’ve chosen, and we’re also going to do that following the current development best practices.

Each chapter will be dedicated to a single core aspect. If you feel like you already know your way there, feel free to skip to the next one. Conversely, if you’re willing to follow us through the whole loop, you’ll have a great journey through the most useful aspects of ASP.NET and Angular, as well as how they can work together to deliver the most common and useful web development tasks, from the most trivial ones to the more complex beasts. It’s an investment that will pay dividends as it will leave you with a maintainable, extensible, and well-structured project, plus the knowledge needed to build your own. The following chapters will guide us through this journey. During the trip, we’ll also learn how to take care of some important high-level aspects, such as SEO, security, performance issues, best coding practices, and deployment, as they will become very important if/when our applications are eventually published in a production environment.

To avoid making things too boring, we’ll try to pick enjoyable themes and scenarios that will also have some usefulness in the real world: to better understand what we mean – no spoilers here – you’ll just have to keep reading.