Running a Single Page App and can’t wait for Lambda@Edge? Here’s an alternative*

* Yes, I do understand that Lambda@Edge will provide a completely different level of scale and performance, and is an industrialised managed offering. None the less, what’s described below could serve many use cases just fine. 😉

With that, on to it.

There’s no point arguing that Single Page Apps (SPAs) are in vogue. One of the approaches to SPAs is to move business logic into the client, and leverage a range of API-based services to provide needed server-side functionality. Here’s a very good argument presented on this topic: Joe Emison – 10X Product Development.

A side effect of following this pattern is your SPA code ends up on a server that only knows how to serve your static client content (html / js / css / images). This may present a problem when you try to integrate your SPA with another stand-alone application, for example, blog hosted by WordPress.

Let’s have a look in a bit more detail, followed by what can be done about it.