I'm new to SPA development, so this may be a stupid question. please understand.
My question is "Is SPA(Single Page Application) needs a Application Server?"
As I understand it, the SPA gets the response after calling REST API. It use that response to re-render. If so, is the server that handles REST API "Application Server"?
So many posts say Application Server are tomcat, oracle, etc... and they are also say Application Server handle the request to access the database. Then what is "Application Server" in SPA? or there are no Application Server in SPA? (Are there any architectures or systems I'm not aware of?)
If I'm misunderstanding the architecture, please let me know. I want to understand web server and Application Server in SPA. So I have read many posts but I'm still confused.
Thanks.
A Single Page App requires a server to serve the .css, index.html, and .js files it requires. It is not a requirement that that an SPA must communicate with an application server via any means at all.
Your content can be static or self generated by the app itself. Should you require communication with a backend server, you can consume that via some sort of api over protocols such as http, https, websockets or Server Side Events.
To summarize. An SPA can be completely self contained OR access an api to provide functionality. A standalone app requires a server only to serve the component files (.css, .js, .html) of the app itself.