Is there a book for building a web application?

Question

I am a junior programmer in Enterprise desktop application, and I want to transfer my knowledge field into web base application.

I'm learning django, and want to build a small web application for practice,(and I know it well now)

Is there any guide book for this?(web application building , not django specific)

ps: I know there are tutorial about html, django, ajax and so on, but I want to know how to build a web application, not how to use a tool...

I want to know how to organize,design,and so on.

It is the hardest thing I have encountered..

Answer 1

It's not a book but I have found the W3 School set of tutorials to be excellent.

Answer 2

There are hundreds, if not thousands, of books on all sorts of web application development. Most of the books aimed at smaller projects to get up to speed are for a specific language or framework as that's generally the easiest way to learn web app development.

http://www.djangobook.com/

That's the free online book for learning django so is probably a good place to start.

Keep in mind that django, or any other decent web framework, isn't just a 'tool' to create web applications, they are more flexible and robust than that. They are closer to domain languages for web applications that take care of a lot of the lower level annoyances for you (getting requests, passing data between things, etc). If you really want to learn the low level stuff, then you would be better off learning how to create scripts using something like the python CGI library.

Answer 3

Web application development is not a single concept, it is a bunch of deiffering things that all come together.

You need to learn:

• HTML
• CSS
• Javascript
• DOM
• Codebehind (PHP, ASP.NET, Java, Djangom, Ruby or something else)
• Data storage etc.
• HTTP, FTP, SOAP

The last bit is particularly important, as the protocol, and particularly the statelessness is one of the biggest differences between desktop applications and web applications.

Answer 4

You’d organise and design a web app differently in Django than you would in other frameworks, so I’d focus on Django to begin with.

Answer 5

Building webapp is complex business compared to desktop. You should have fair(working) knowledge of,

• HTML standards
• CSS
• Javascript
• Your preferred back-end language (Python)
• Your preferred back-end framework (Django)

I will suggest you start learning both front-end technologies and back-end technologies at same time.

For back-end there is excellent django book

For front-end HTML, CSS

Edit: Current front-ends are using extensive Javascript so its kind of must to know Javascript, Definitive Guide is best book