Programming Articles

If you're a Web developer, you know you should target your Web applications to be 'mobile first.' This means that your Web applications should look great on a mobile device, and good, if not great, on a desktop browser. There are many techniques you can use to help you develop for mobile. One technique is to use Bootstrap to give yourself responsive styles that change based on the device being used. Another technique, and the focus of this article, is to eliminate HTML tables.

In my last article (CODE Magazine, November/December 2015), I showed you how to manipulate data in an HTML table using only JavaScript and jQuery. There were no post-backs, so the data didn't go anywhere. In this article, you'll use the same HTML and jQuery, but add calls to a Web API to retrieve and modify product data. It isn't necessary to go back and read the previous article; this article presents all of the HTML and the calls to work client-side and add the server-side code as well. I'll be using Visual Studio and .NET to build the Web API service, but the client-side coding is generic and can call a Web API built in any language or platform.

As developers, we're always asked to do more for our users. They want their Web pages faster, smaller, and with more features. This means that you have to start working more in JavaScript and jQuery on the client-side. By doing more client-side coding, you reduce post-backs to the server, thereby increasing performance. In this first article of a series on working within HTML and the Web API, I'll show you how to add, edit, and delete data in an HTML table using JavaScript and jQuery, but no post-backs. In subsequent articles, you'll learn how to take that data and use the Web API to retrieve and modify this data.