Compiled Learning Objectives

At the end of the sprint, you should be able to do the following things. Make sure to check you can do them all, and if not, go back and keep practicing until you can.

Read about the Internet

• Define the terms ‘host’, ‘client’, and ‘server’.
• Define the terms ‘request’ and ‘response’.
• Explain the responsibilities/guarantees of four network layers: Link, Internet, Transport, Application.
• Explain the purpose of a TCP port.

Read about the world-wide web

• Identify the components of a URL.
• Manually parse an HTTP request into a method, path, protocol, headers, and body.
• Manually parse an HTTP response into protocol, status code, headers, and body.
• Describe the request-response pattern of a web browser interacting with a server.
• Compare static and dynamic web servers.

Limitations of frontends

• Explain what can’t be achieved with just a frontend

Limited information

• Identify strategies for updating information in a static website.
• Explain why needing dynamic information may require us to write a backend.

Limited sharing across computers

• Explain why sharing state across computers may require us to write (or use) a backend.

Limited cross-user interaction

• Explain why sharing state across users may require us to write (or use) a backend.

Everything is public

• Explain why needing secrets may require backend.

What is a backend?

• Define the backend of a website.
• Explain the terms client and server.

Example backend

• Run a backend using Express and NodeJS.

Backend statefulness

• Identify whether some program is stateful or stateless.

Limitations of backends

• Explain why a backend on its own doesn’t provide reliable data persistence.
• Explain why we may prefer doing work in a frontend rather than backend to avoid latency.

Responsibilities of frontends, backends, and databases

• Categorise functionality into where it should belong

Design a frontend and backend

• Design a frontend and backend which can communicate with each other

Write a frontend and backend

• Run a frontend and backend which can communicate with each other

Deploy a frontend and backend

• Deploy a frontend and backend
• Configure a frontend to talk to a specific deployed backend