DEV Community

Cover image for REACT: What exactly is a single-page application?
Yash Rai
Yash Rai

Posted on

REACT: What exactly is a single-page application?

A Single Page Application (SPA) is a type of web application that loads once and dynamically updates content as users interact, eliminating the need for full page reloads. It provides a smoother, more responsive user experience by leveraging JavaScript for seamless navigation.

In traditional websites, clicking a link triggers the browser to fetch a new page from the server, resulting in a full reload. If you've experienced early versions of websites like Facebook, you might recall that actions such as 'liking' required a reload to see the impact.

  • SPAs load once, and subsequent interactions dynamically update content.
  • JavaScript is used to manipulate the page's content without requiring a complete reload.
  • SPAs provide a smoother and more interactive user experience by eliminating the need for frequent page refreshes.
  • Actions like 'liking' become instantaneous, enhancing the overall flow of the application.

Popular SPA's: Gmail, Google Maps, Airbnb, Netflix, Pinterest, Paypal, and many more.
Resource for SPA's: React, Angular, Vue.Js

Heroku

This site is built on Heroku

Join the ranks of developers at Salesforce, Airbase, DEV, and more who deploy their mission critical applications on Heroku. Sign up today and launch your first app!

Get Started

Top comments (0)

A Workflow Copilot. Tailored to You.

Pieces.app image

Our desktop app, with its intelligent copilot, streamlines coding by generating snippets, extracting code from screenshots, and accelerating problem-solving.

Read the docs