One network request

Single-page apps have been commonplace for a while and the idea of having to wait for a full pageload to navigate within an app seems quite retrogressive. As a proof-of-concept, I wanted to develop the next logical step; a single-request app.

Why?

This probably doesn’t sound particularly exciting; surely anyone could make a web application which only requires one file, right? Who needs jQuery or a favicon anyway? But:

1 network request, 36.8 kb transferred in 31 ms

How?

For my not-particularly-challenging proof-of-concept that didn’t really achieve that much, I did the following:

  • Inlinined libraries (jQuery, etc.)
  • Used a base64 favicon
  • Inlined all scripts and styles
  • Made the application navigable via hashes and query strings
  • Authenticated via an associative array of “email => password”

Is this useful? Not really. Am I undeservedly proud? Hells yeah. Should you do this too? Hells no. This method of authentication is horrifically insecure.

That said…

1 network request, 36.8 kb transferred in 31 ms

It’s hard to argue with that.

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