LIBERATED: A Fully In-Browser Client and Server Web Application Debug and Test Environment

Traditional web-based client-server application development has been accomplished in two separate pieces: the frontend portion which runs on the client machine has been written in HTML and JavaScript; and the backend portion which runs on the server machine has been written in PHP, ASP.net, or some other “server-side” language which typically interfaces to a database. The skill sets required for these two pieces are different.

In this paper, I demonstrate a new methodology for web-based client-server application development, in which a simulated server is built into the browser environment to run the backend code. This allows the frontend to issue requests to the backend, and the developer to step, using a debugger, directly from frontend code into backend code, and to debug and test both the frontend and backend portions. Once working, that backend code is moved to a real server. Since the application-specific code has been tested in the simulated environment, it is unlikely that bugs will be encountered at the server that did not exist in the simulated environment.

I have implemented this methodology and used it for development of a live application. All of the code is open source.