State Management

 State Management - Web Development

State management is a key aspect of web development. It refers to the management and storage of the current state of a web application. State management on both the client and server sides is crucial for building robust and efficient web applications.

The choice of state management approach depends on the specific requirements of the application, its complexity, and the development framework being used. Each approach has its own advantages and trade-offs, and the selection often involves a balance between simplicity, scalability, and maintainability. Let's understand the concept in details.

What State exactly mean?

In object-oriented paradigm, a class is used to model a real-world entity. An Entity is a person, place, thing or a concept about which one needs to store certain information and it performs certain actions. A class has data-members or fields to represent information about the entity being modelled. Memory is allocated for fields to store the information about the object or an instance of the class (called instance variable). Recall, a class is a mere definition and a user-defined datatype, to use it, the programmer creates its variable termed as object or an instance of the class in OOPs Terminology. In Object-Oriented Analysis and Design terminology (OOAD), a field of the class is termed as a State of an object. The state of an object holds the information of an object at that instance of time.

What is the need of State Management?

The application when executing creates objects or instances of class when required and destroyed when not required. Resources like memory, files or network connections, system resources like specific hardware are allocated to object when created and released when destroyed. The state of the object is to be maintained by the application. However, it requires that the application should be in continuous execution. Example – Windows Application is a continuously running application until it is closed.

Is State Management applicable to Web?

Web Applications are hosted on remote servers and accessed through an internet using a web browser. It is based on client-server model. The communication is in the form of Request-Response cycle. It is based on HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) and it is a stateless protocol.

Web Sites are not a continuously running application. It executes on server when request from client comes for a particular interactive and a dynamic page. The server may create many objects or instance of the class when generating the dynamic page. The page once created is sent as a response to the requesting client browser. The objects created are destroyed on the server. This is necessary because the server is serve many client request from all over the world. Each request will creates its own required objects which in turn uses server resources. The Server will ultimately will run out of resources and will not be able to serve the requesting clients.

Client-side State Management

Client-side state management is done on the client-side. It refers to the techniques and methods used to manage the state of a web application on the client side, i.e., within the users web browser. State management is essential for handling user interactions, maintaining the application's state, and providing a seamless and interactive experience.

Server-side State Management

Server-side state management involves techniques to store and manage the state of an application on the server, rather than on the client's browser. It is central for maintaining the consistency and integrity of application data, handling user sessions, and ensuring security. The common server-side state management techniques uses Session and database to maintain state. However it uses server-side resources.

Next, the State Management in Web Technologies - ASP.Net, JSP, PHP and Python wii be explored.