I’ve been working with low-code tools for years, building automations, integrations, and APIs. Recently, I’ve wondered whether we’ve advanced far enough to use a low-code platform as the back-end for a single page application (SPA). It seems to be a nice combination — the SPA can be hosted anywhere, the API is quick and easy to develop, and they can evolve independently of each other e.g. if you need a native app just develop the UI and use the same API.

So, I decided to see whether we can by building a web application from scratch where

• The developer (me) is not a full-time developer.

• The application must interface with other systems.

• The application must persist data.

Target

Most non-trivial web applications require some kind of user onboarding and authentication with a database to store data and a back-end to do the processing. In this case, I included interfacing with a SaaS product (Xero) using OAuth2 to make sure we can handle some complexity.

The application, therefore, has the following features

• Signup.

• Login.

• Logout.

• Connect to Xero.

• Disconnect from Xero.

#api #we