Building Your First JAMstack Application 2

A step-by-step tutorial for creating modern web applications with JavaScript, APIs, and Markup

Published on 1/25/2024By Developer Relations

Building Your First JAMstack Application

The JAMstack architecture has become increasingly popular for building fast, secure, and scalable web applications. In this tutorial, we'll walk through creating your first JAMstack application from scratch.

What is JAMstack?

JAMstack stands for:

JavaScript: Dynamic functionality
APIs: Server-side operations via reusable APIs
Markup: Pre-built markup, served from a CDN

Prerequisites

Before we begin, make sure you have:

Node.js (v14 or higher) installed
Basic knowledge of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript
A code editor (we recommend VS Code)
Git installed on your machine

Step 1: Setting Up Your Project

First, let's create a new directory for our project and initialize it:

mkdir my-jamstack-app
cd my-jamstack-app
npm init -y

Step 2: Installing Dependencies

We'll use several tools to build our JAMstack application:

npm install --save-dev @11ty/eleventy axios

Step 3: Creating Your First Page

Create a new file called index.html in your project root:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
    <meta charset="UTF-8">
    <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">
    <title>My JAMstack App</title>
</head>
<body>
    <h1>Welcome to JAMstack!</h1>
    <div id="api-content"></div>
</body>
</html>

Step 4: Adding Dynamic Content with APIs

Create a JavaScript file to fetch data from an API:

// scripts/api.js
async function fetchData() {
    const response = await fetch('https://api.example.com/data');
    const data = await response.json();
    document.getElementById('api-content').innerHTML = data.content;
}

fetchData();

Step 5: Building and Deploying

JAMstack sites can be deployed to various platforms like Netlify, Vercel, or GitHub Pages. The build process pre-renders your pages for optimal performance.

Best Practices

Keep it Simple: Start with static content and progressively enhance with JavaScript
Use CDNs: Serve your static assets from a CDN for better performance
Optimize Images: Use modern image formats and lazy loading
Security First: Since there's no server to hack, JAMstack sites are inherently more secure

Conclusion

Congratulations! You've just built your first JAMstack application. This architecture provides excellent performance, security, and developer experience. As you continue learning, explore more advanced features like serverless functions and headless CMS integration.