Blazor Web Development: Building Single Page Applications
As technology advances, the concept of building web applications changes from traditional client-server architecture to single-page applications. Due to this, the popularity of single-page applications (SPAs) has increased significantly. This rise in popularity is because of SPA architecture in which web pages are rewritten dynamically on the client side instead of loading entirely new pages from a server. This means the user doesn’t need to refresh or reload the whole page when navigating between different sections or pages, providing a fast and seamless experience. With the introduction of Blazor from Microsoft, developers can now build single-page applications using C# instead of JavaScript.
What is Blazor?
Blazor is a SPA framework developed by Microsoft that allows web developers to build the front end of web applications using .NET and C#. Blazor was released in 2018 as a part of ASP.NET Core, and due to its simplicity and productivity, it has gained popularity among .NET developers.
Blazor web development uses component-based architecture to develop web applications in which applications are built using reusable components. This component-based architecture is similar to popular JavaScript frameworks such as React and Angular in which components are built in JavaScript. However in Blazor, these components use HTML, CSS, and C# code instead of JavaScript.
The following code example shows a very basic component named Welcome.razor:
<h1 class=”c1”> @welcomeNote <h1>@code{private string welcomeNote = “Welcome to Blazor Components”;}
As we can see in the code above, the components in Blazor use C# instead of JavaScript along with HTML and CSS. Now let's see how to use this component. We can use it as a regular HTML element, as shown below:
<div><Welcome/></div>
The components are called by their names, as seen in the code snippet above. This gives us an idea of how components are built and used in Blazor. In the next section, we’ll discuss the role of full stack Blazor web development and highlight its core features.
Why use Blazor?
Blazor provides a rich set of features that help developers to build beautiful web applications that aren’t available in traditional JavaScript frameworks. Here are some of the key features that Blazor web development provides:
Component-based architecture: Blazor uses component-based architecture in which the application's basic building block is a component, and this component is also reusable. The architecture makes the application modular and easy to maintain.
Full stack development: Blazor allows developers to build applications’ front ends and back ends in the same language (C#) so they don’t need to learn any other language to develop full stack applications. This makes it easier to develop full stack web applications for developers.
Code reuse: Companies that have heavily invested in .NET infrastructure can reuse their existing code in Blazor applications as well. This can save development time and help them to build applications more quickly.
Cross-platform development: Applications built with Blazor can run on many platforms, such as Windows, Linux, and macOS. This makes it easy to develop cross-platform applications.
Interoperability: Blazor allows developers to interoperate with existing JavaScript libraries and frameworks. This helps developers integrate with existing applications.
Scalability: Blazor is designed to be scalable so it can handle high-traffic loads. This helps developers build large-scale applications.
Developer productivity: Blazor web development increases developers' productivity by providing features such as hot reload and a rich set of UI components that make the development process faster.
Blazor templated components: Blazor templated components allow developers to create customized reusable components. These components can be customized according to the user input. This helps improve code maintainability.
Strongly typed data binding: Blazor applications use strongly typed data binding. This feature helps ensure that the data is always in the correct format. This helps improve code quality by reducing bugs.
CSS isolation: Blazor supports CSS isolation. This helps style each component individually instead of managing a single style sheet for all the components. This help avoid conflicts among components.
Virtualization: Blazor supports a technique called virtualization, which helps limit the UI rendering and displays only those parts that are currently visible to the user.
These features make Blazor an excellent option for building single-page applications and offer several advantages over traditional JavaScript frameworks, including a reduced learning curve, improved performance, and increased productivity. Moreover, Blazor provides different hosting models with its unique set of features discussed below.
Hosting models
Blazor provides different hosting models. These hosting models allow developers to choose the execution of the application either on the client or server side. These are as follows:
Blazor WebAssembly
Blazor Server
Blazor Hybrid
Blazor WebAssembly
The client-side model in Blazor, also known as WebAssembly, allows the application code to be executed directly in the user’s browser. To execute the code in the user’s browser, the entire application is downloaded on the client side. The application is executed on the client side with the help of WebAssembly, which is a low-level bytecode format that is designed to be executed in a web browser.
This also means that the user’s device must have a compatible browser that supports WebAssembly. Currently, all major web browsers support WebAssembly, such as Firefox, Safari, Edge, and Chrome.
In this model, the C# code is compiled into WebAssembly and executed in the user’s browser without the need for a server. The server is needed only for data, and client-side Blazor applications can communicate with the server through APIs to retrieve the data.
There are several advantages of using this model, which are listed below:
Improved client-side performance: Since the application is running on the client side, it results in high-performance user interfaces when the user interacts with the application and delivers an experience that is similar to desktop-based applications.
Offline support: Blazor client-side applications are downloaded entirely on the client side, which enables the offline use of the application if an internet connection is lost or not available.
Reduced learning curve: Blazor allows developers to create applications using C# and .NET, which makes it easy to develop applications for those developers who are already familiar with these technologies. This results in reduced learning time and accelerated development.
Ease in deployment: The Blazor client application doesn’t require a server with an ASP.NET core to host the application. It can be deployed to any static file server or content delivery network because the application will be downloaded on the client side.
Blazor Server
In this hosting model, the Blazor application is hosted on the server, and the user interacts with the application through the web browser. The communication between the client and server side is done using a real-time connection, which is established using SignalR. SignalR is a real-time communication library used to communicate with the user’s browser.
When a user sends the request to the Blazor server application, the server creates a SignalR connection with the client side. This connection is used to send and receive messages between the client and server side. For example, when a user performs an action, like clicking a button, the request is sent to the server using this connection. The server then processes the request and sends back the appropriate response to the client side.
This means that the UI interactions and events are sent back to the server using SignalR, and as a result, the updated UI is sent back to the client side from the server.
There are several advantages of using the Blazor server model, such as those listed below:
Minimal client code: Since all processing is the responsibility of the server side, there is minimal client-side code in this model as compared to the client-side hosting model in which the client needs to download a significant amount of code to execute the application. This results in better performance and faster page loads. This also means that this model is more appropriate for low-powered devices.
Real-time communication: In this model, a real-time connection is established between the client and server side using SignalR, which allows developers to create real-time applications such as live monitoring, dashboards, chat applications, etc.
Security: Since the application is deployed on the server side, it provides built-in support for security features, such as authentication and authorization. Moreover, the application logic is also executed on the server side and not accessible to the client side. This reduces the risk of code tampering and malicious attacks, which are easier with client-side applications.
Ease of code: The Blazor server application runs on the server using ASP.NET Core runtime, which offers a wide range of features such as dependency injection, middleware, routing, authentication, and authorization. These features help developers to create and handle complex application logic with ease.
Blazor Hybrid
This model allows developers to build native mobile or desktop applications using a hybrid approach in which Razor components run directly in the .NET process instead of WebAssembly. This means that this approach doesn’t require WebAssembly to run the application.
In this model, an embedded web view control is used to render the web-based UI. Moreover, the application can be built using different .NET native technologies, such as MAUI and WPF along with Razor components.
There are several advantages of using this approach, such as the following:
Access of native capabilities: Since this model is used to build native applications, Blazor Hybrid applications have full access to the native capabilities of the device, which isn’t possible with only the web platform.
Leverage web development skills: Blazor’s Hybrid model allows developers to build native applications with web development skills and experience instead of learning new technologies, reducing development time.
Reuse of Razor components: This model allows developers to reuse and share those existing Razor components which are built for Blazor WebAssembly or Blazor Server.
Wrapping up and next steps
Blazor is a powerful framework built by Microsoft that enables developers to create interactive and beautiful applications using C# and .NET environments. Its unique features, like prebuilt components, server-side and client-side models, integration with ASP.NET Core, and support for real-time communication, make it a popular choice among developers who are looking for a modern and efficient way to build web applications.
We hope this blog has helped you understand the basics of Blazor and why it’s important in full stack web development. To learn more about C# and Blazor web development, you may find the following courses helpful:
