Overview: Performance, Optimization, and Security

In the previous chapters of the course, we created a full stack application from scratch, starting with building and creating a REST API using Django and Django REST Framework and then creating a web interface with React to communicate with the API we created. We also deployed applications on services such as AWS EC2 and AWS S3. However, we need to further investigate some important aspects of having an application deployed on the internet, such as performance checks, query optimization, frontend optimization, and finally, security aspects.

Topics covered in this chapter

In this chapter, we will learn how to create a performant API with fewer SQL queries and faster API responses, how to serve the API and the React frontend over HTTPS using AWS CloudFront, and how to log out users using the API. In this chapter, we’ll cover the following topics:

• Revoking JWT tokens.

• Adding caching.

• Optimizing the deployment of a React application.

• Securing deployed applications with HTTPS with AWS CloudFront.