There are a lot of about PWA that tell in detail what it is and how to set it up. Yet you may not always understand them from the first time. articles My goal is to provide basic information in simple language that will be enough for you to understand what PWA is. Then to show you a real example to strengthen everything that you learned. Thus, take your laptop and follow me. After reading it you will understand the following: Advantages and disadvantages of PWA. Basic concept. How to configure this technology on your website. How to update the cache. Advantages and Disadvantages As with any technology, PWA has its benefits and limitations. Before covering them, let’s understand what PWA is. PWA technology was announced by Google in 2015. It positions itself as an additional add-on that allows you to make the site look like a mobile app. At the same time, the interior does not change, does not transform, the site remains the same, only the browser is transformed. Also, you should know for which type of business the PWA is a better solution than a mobile application. You could find more information about the differences between PWA and mobile app . here What can PWA do? Sending notifications, caching content, and setting a shortcut to the desktop; Sending notifications in the form of a pop-up window where you can notify the user about something; Working offline, i.e. without an Internet connection, thanks to content caching. PWA Advantages PWA is . You don’t need to go to any app stores, download anything, or dance with a tambourine. Just open the site by clicking on the link, the window “install a shortcut to the desktop” POPs up, install it and you’re done. easy to install It more or less modern , you only need a browser. works on all devices It allows the site to be because of the shortcut on the desktop. You unlocked your phone, clicked on the shortcut, and the site opened. That’s cool. more accessible It takes up , less than 1 MB. less memory Setting up a PWA requires than creating a mobile app. It is unnecessary to write two identical apps on Android and IOS. Therefore, it will be much cheaper for businesses. less development time — all resources are transmitted only over the https. Higher security . If there are problems with the Internet, the content will be compensated from the cache, so the site will always be available. Stable operation PWA Disadvantages There is a misconception about the fact that . I don’t agree with that! And the first problem with which you become involved is the , where HTML markup on the rendering page of JavaScript. Until the scripts load (as long as they need) the layout will not appear, and will only be with the “app” — ID. Here is just at the moment when everything is becoming stupid, SEO analysis occurs, but the page, as you understand, is empty. And even if you add +100500 PWA to the site, they will not speed up the rendering of HTML code. And to be less unsubstantiated, let’s make sure by a real example. Let’s take the site , which is a single page application. If you look at its inside , you’ll see everything I described above. In other cases when the server renders all the HTML markup at once there are no problems, as, for example, here . PWA helps to improve SEO performance SPA <div> https://madops.io view-source: https://madops.io view-source: https://maddevs.io Features such as camera control, SMS sending, sensor access, and more will not be available for PWA, for security reasons. Disability. There are still . For example, push notifications on IOS. some browsers that don’t support PWA If you want to read more about what PWA is please check this . Here are the that use PWA. link sites Basic concept Before going deeply in PWA set up, let’s figure out its basic concepts and it’s components — This is essentially a script file that is responsible for all this magic. All browser requests go through it, which gives a lot of possibilities, for example, if there is no Internet connection, it returns content from the cache(if it is there, of course). In it, we handle various events, write, delete files from the cache, and much more. Scripts run in the background, in parallel with the application. Service Worker — settings File. There we specify which icons to use, which text to display in the shortcut, in which format to open the browser window, and so on. Let’s talk about it in more detail below. manifest.json — this is the name of the shell for PWA. More specifically, it is a browser that is slightly transformed to give more features to the developer. Application Shell — One of the main requirements of PWA is to transmit data over https Protocol, which is more secure. You can use localhost for development. HTTPS — technology for sending push notifications. Push Notifications Setting up PWA PWA is really simple in set up. So let’s start right from writing the code! No, wait. Here is a link to the ready-made code Here you can download the images that will be required further, well, for the one you will get acquainted with what happened. https://github.com/denisoed/PWA-example . Firstly you need to create a folder in the project and name it PWA, for example. Then add it to this folder index.html, which will contain the following code: <!doctype html> <head> <meta charset="utf-8"> <title>PWA</title> <meta name="description" content="Progressive Web Apps"> </head> <body class="fullscreen"> <div class="container"> <a href="https://maddevs.io" target="_blank"> <img src="./images/logo.svg" alt="Mad Devs"> </a> <h1>PWA</h1> <p>Progressive Web Apps</p> </div> </body> </html> < = > html lang "en" I’ve already prepared the layout, but it looks bad without styles, so we’ll add them as well. Creating a CSS folder where we add the styles.css file and insert the code below: body { font-family: sans-serif; } html, .fullscreen { : flex; height: %; margin: ; padding: ; width: %; background-color: # ; } .container { : auto; text-align: center; } .container img { : px; height: auto; } .container h1 { : #fff; font-size: rem; font-weight: bold; margin: px px; } .container p { : #fff; font-size: rem; margin: ; } /* Make content area fill the entire browser window */ display 100 0 0 100 000 /* Center the content in the browser window */ margin width 50 color 12 30 0 -20 color 3 0 Then connect this file to index.html, in the <head>…</head> tag <link rel= href= > "stylesheet" "css/styles.css" Let’s immediately connect the necessary images, which can be downloaded . Click on the link, there will be a button , green such, poke it, then poke . The archive will be downloaded and there will be images in the images folder. Phew, I think I explained it quite clearly: here Clone or download Download ZIP You open the project, create the images directory there, where you insert all the images. Then open it index.html and insert meta information into the <head>…</head> tag. What it is and why you can read . here <link rel= href= type= /> <meta name="theme-color" content="black" /> <meta name="apple-mobile-web-app-capable" content="yes"> <meta name="apple-mobile-web-app-status-bar-style" content="black"> <meta name="apple-mobile-web-app-title" content="PWA"> <meta name="msapplication-TileImage" content="images/mstile-144x144.png"> <meta name="msapplication-TileColor" content="#FFFFFF"> <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0"> "icon" "images/favicon.ico" "image/x-icon" < = = > link rel "apple-touch-icon" href "images/mstile- 150x150.png" As a result, in the file index.html, there should be a structure like this: <!doctype html> <head> <meta charset="utf-8"> <title>PWA</title> <meta name="description" content="Progressive Web Apps"> <link rel="icon" href="images/favicon.ico" type="image/x-icon" /> <link rel="apple-touch-icon" href="images/mstile-150x150.png"> <meta name="theme-color" content="black" /> <meta name="apple-mobile-web-app-capable" content="yes"> <meta name="apple-mobile-web-app-status-bar- style" content="black"> <meta name="apple-mobile-web-app-title" content="PWA"> <meta name="msapplication-TileImage" content="images/mstile-144x144.png"> <meta name="msapplication-TileColor" content="#000"> <meta name="viewport" content="width=device- width, initial-scale=1.0"> <link rel="stylesheet" href="css/styles.css"> </head> <body class="fullscreen"> <div class="container"> <a href="https://maddevs.io" target="_blank"> <img src="./images/logo.svg" alt="Mad Devs"> </a> <h1>PWA</h1> <p>Progressive Web Apps</p> </div> </body> </html> < = > html lang "en" Now it remains to run and see what happened. I have found a very convenient extension that runs a local server, you need to install it, we will need it next. There is nothing difficult, just specify the folder with the project where it is index.html he’ll do it himself. Copy the link and paste it into the browser. Web Server for Chrome And here’s what we got. I would not say that this is fine, but how normal for me! Well, listen, the most difficult thing, consider it done, let’s now see what google validation thinks about our work. To do this, press and go to the tab (before Google updated, this tab named ), there will be a blue button, poke. f12 Lighthouse Audits Generate report After the validation process is completed, we will see the following picture: the item responsible for PWA will be gray. This means that we do not have any settings. And if you scroll down, you can see the recommendations that you need to follow in order for PWA to work like clockwork. The tab will help you track all errors when configuring PWA. Lighthouse Well, we finally got to the most interesting part. First, you need to create a manifest.json file in the root of the project. We add the following metadata to it: — Full name. Used in the app shortcut; name — Abbreviated name will be used where the full name will not fit; short_name — A list of icons that will be displayed in the shortcut of the installed app; icons — Default language; lang — Required parameter. It tells the application which files to start from. When opening the app, the browser will always open this page; start_url — Indicates which format to open the browser window in; display — This property is used on the screen saver when the app is first launched on a mobile device; background_color — Sets the color of the toolbar and can be displayed in the app preview in the task switches. theme_color must match the meta-theme color specified in the document header. In Our case, <meta name= “theme-color” content= “black” />: theme_color { : , : , : [ { : , : , : }, { : , : , : }, { : , : , : }, { : , : , : }, { : , : , : }, { : , : , : }, { : , : , : } ], : , : , : , : , : } "name" "Progressive Web Apps" "short_name" "PWA" "icons" "src" "images/mstile-70x70.png" "sizes" "70x70" "type" "image/png" "src" "images/mstile-144x144.png" "sizes" "144x144" "type" "image/png" "src" "images/mstile-150x150.png" "sizes" "150x150" "type" "image/png" "src" "images/mstile-192x192.png" "sizes" "310x150" "type" "image/png" "src" "images/mstile-310x150.png" "sizes" "310x150" "type" "image/png" "src" "images/mstile-310x310.png" "sizes" "310x310" "type" "image/png" "src" "images/mstile-512x512.png" "sizes" "310x310" "type" "image/png" "lang" "en-US" "start_url" "/index.html" "display" "standalone" "background_color" "black" "theme_color" "black" This is enough for now. is a description of all the properties of this file, as will be the time, read necessarily. Here Plug-in manifest.json in index.html in the <head>…</head> tag <link rel= href= > "manifest" "/manifest.json" Let’s start writing scripts. Creating a folder named js, where we add the main.js file with this code: .addEventListener( , () => { ( navigator) { navigator.serviceWorker.register( ).then( { .log( ); }).catch( .log( , err)); } }); window 'load' if 'serviceWorker' in '/sw.js' => reg console 'SW registered!' => err console 'SW registration FAIL:' A few words about what is happening there: As soon as the page loads, we check whether the browser supports serviceWorker, and if successful, we go further Then register our file sw.js(which has yet to be configured). Nothing unusual about that. Enabling scripts in index.html, but no longer in the <head>…</head> tag, but before the closing </body> tag. <script src= > "js/main.js" </ > script Well, now let’s create the file itself sw.js. It will store all the logic for Service Worker. Create it in the root of the project, and add the cache name as the first line. cacheName = ; const 'pwa_v1' Next line, add the variable. In it, we specify the files to be cached. Yes, I understand that it is not convenient, I have to register all the files with my hands, but we have what we have. But we will always be sure that nothing extra is cached. Traffic savings and stability. includeToCache includeToCache = [ , , , , , , ]; const '/' '/index.html' '/images/favicon.ico' '/images/logo.svg' '/images/logo-black.svg' '/css/styles.css' '/js/main.js' Following we go to the event. Service Worker has several events under the hood, also called life cycles. And the first of them is . It is triggered only once when writing the cache. install self.addEventListener( , e => { e.waitUntil( caches.open(cacheName).then( { cache.addAll(includeToCache); }) ); }); /* Start the service worker and cache all of the app's content */ 'install' => cache return event. This event scans all requests, and if something matches what is in the cache, it returns a match from the cache. Otherwise, it returns what comes from the server. Fetch The method is responsible for retrieving data from the cache or the data returned by the server. And if the server didn’t return anything, we take it from the cache. respondWith self.addEventListener(‘fetch’, e => { e.respondWith( caches.match(e.request).then( { response || fetch(e.request); }) ); }); /* Serve cached content when offline */ => response return This code is sufficient for now. Let’s now make sure that the file sw.js registered and the cache is recorded. Go to the developer console, open the Application tab, and then go to the Service Workers settings. Here we see that the file sw.js successfully registered, this is confirmed by a green light. We continue to move along the side navigation panel, find a drop-down list with the name Cache Storage, where our cache is actually stored. If you click on it, you can see which files and content were cached. Now, if you disable the Internet and reload the page, the site will work. Sum up. In order to make the site work when there is no Internet, you do not need to install any frameworks, add libraries, and so on. A few lines of code and a General understanding of this technology are enough. How to update the cache? The first problem I encountered while dealing with PWA was updating the old cache. But, as it turned out, this is very easy to solve. Let’s change a couple of styles so that you can see that something has changed. Then refresh the page and make sure that the styles have changed on the page. We cut off the Internet connection and reload the page again, but for some reason, the cache was not updated, and we see the old version of the site. The solution is to add the event to sw.js file, when called, we will check the name of the old and new cache, and if the names differ, then delete the old one and add a new one. Yes, in order for the cache to be updated, we need to change its name every time the code is updated. activate In the beginning, I did not specify the postfix in the cache name for nothing, this will be its version. It doesn’t really matter what you call it, as long as the names are different. *_v1 self.addEventListener(‘activate’, e => { e.waitUntil( caches.keys().then( .all( keys.map( { (cacheName !== key) { caches.delete(key); } }) )).then( { .log(cacheName + ‘ now ready to handle fetches!’); }) ); }); // delete any caches that aren’t in cacheName // which will get rid of version => keys Promise => key if return => () console If you read the code, you can see a condition where the cache names are compared, and if they don’t match, the old cache is deleted. A few words about the event. This event is triggered after the worker has been registered and is ready to work. But in order for it to be ready, you need to wait until the old cache is no longer used by the site, and this will take some time. And to get rid of this expectation, you can add the method below. activate self.skipWaiting(); Now the cache will be updated immediately after registering a new worker. Adding it to the event. install self.addEventListener( , e => { self.skipWaiting(); e.waitUntil( caches.open(cacheName).then( { cache.addAll(includeToCache); }) ); }); /* Start the service worker and cache all of the app's content */ 'install' => cache return And in the file adding the update function, which will start updating the cache every time the page is reloaded. main.js reg.update(); Add the method. In fact, it does not matter, the main thing is that in the callback console.log() .then() .addEventListener( , () => { ( navigator) { navigator.serviceWorker.register( ).then( { reg.update(); .log( ); }).catch( .log( , err)); } }); window 'load' if 'serviceWorker' in '/sw.js' => reg console 'SW registered!' => err console 'SW registration FAIL:' That’s it, reload the page. Open the developer tools again, check in the Service Workers tab on the side panel, reload the page again, and watch the Cache Storage tab. Here you can see how the old cache will be replaced by the new one. offline Installing a new worker takes ~2 minutes, so you may need to reload the page several times. And after the page, we see our new styles and updated cache. Hooray! Conclusion In this article, we’ve learned basic information about how to create and set up PWA technology in a real example. Please, feel free to comment on the article and share your experience about setting up the PWA. Previously published at https://blog.maddevs.io/progressive-web-apps-practical-usage-guide-8f9ddfea1cb3
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