Web

Nearly all computer applications rely on one of two principal message standards: JSON and XML. Today, JSON is the most widely used format, having overtaken XML within the last 5 years, but is JSON better than XML? In part 1 of this multi-part series on JSON vs. XML, Toptal Freelance Full-stack Developer Seva Safris will take a closer look at the history of the web to uncover the original purpose of XML and JSON, and analyze the software trends in recent years that lead to JSON becoming more popular than XML.

The WebSocket protocol is one of the ways to make your application handle real-time messages. The most common alternatives are long polling and server-sent events. In this article, Toptal Freelance Java Developer Tomasz Dąbrowski shows us how to implement WebSockets with the Spring Boot framework, and use STOMP for effective client-server communication.

Providing production support to an application is one of the most challenging aspects of software development. In this article, Toptal Freelance Java Developer Flavio Pezzini shows us techniques that can prevent bugs and make finding issues in production much faster.

The de facto standard for web application security is the Open Web Application Security Project’s Top 10 Project. It lists the ten most prevalent security threats based on an extensive amount of data and community feedback and was updated in late 2017. In this article, Toptal Freelance Full-stack and System Security Developer Hrvoje Gazibara discusses the changes to the OWASP Top 10’s most recent revision by illustrating new vulnerabilities, and even some that were removed.

Eliminate complex code configurations using a monorepo structure. This guide will help you get started.

In this article, Toptal Freelance JavaScript Developer Nick Chikovani shows how easy it is to perform web scraping using a headless browser. Specifically, he provides a Puppeteer tutorial, going through a few examples of how to control Google Chrome to take screenshots and gather structured data.

Microsoft and Google have worked together since Angular 2, rendering ASP.NET Web Forms and MVC Razor obsolete. Nevertheless, while ASP.NET’s front-end tools may be lacking, it is still a great back-end framework. In this article, Toptal Freelance Angular Developer Pablo Albella teaches us how to create the best architecture for both these worlds.

Elm is a purely functional, strongly typed, reactive, and event-driven web client language. It takes a step back from the norms and really changes the way you reason about and program web application front-ends. In this article, Toptal Freelance Software Engineer Vuk Djapic takes you through the exotic concepts of Elm and its pros and cons in real world use.

Out of the box, Angular provides two different change detection strategies: Default and OnPush. Each strategy has its own advantages, but sometimes it is easy to miss a nifty optimization opportunity if you stick to the default strategy. In this article, Toptal Freelance Software Engineer Ahmet Shapiro-Erciyas walks us through the available change detection strategies and shows how to use them in any Angular project.