Build a JavaScript Single Page App — without using a framework

Front-end frameworks are great. They abstract away much of the complexity of building a single-page application (SPA) and help you organize your code in an intelligible manner as your project grows.  However, there’s a flip side: these frameworks come with a degree of overhead and can introduce complexity of their own.

In Chapter 3 of the 6 JavaScript Projects, Michael Wanyoike shows you how to build an SPA from scratch, without using a client-side JavaScript framework. You'll build a currency conversion app, shown above, that can:

• display the latest currency rates
• convert from one currency to another
• display past currency rates based on a specified date

The app will use the fixer.io and Free Currency Converter APIs to provide these features.

Building this app will help you evaluate what these frameworks actually do for you and at what point it makes sense to use one. It will also give you an understanding of the pieces that make up a typical SPA and how they’re wired together. You'll see that it’s not that difficult to build a single-page application powered by REST APIs without using a framework, but you'll also learn about the potential issues that you can encounter that a framework like React, Vue, or Angular should be able to help with.

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Until next time,
James at SitePoint