Compiled Learning Objectives

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