Selecting a State Management Strategy for Modern Web Frontend Applications

Abstract

State management system plays an essential role in any application. Just as the circulatory system in a living organism aids in transporting nutrients and other vital materials from where they are produced to where they are used to keep the body alive and healthy, the state management system of an application defines how data is controlled, distributed and moves around within the application. However, managing the state of an application could quickly get complex and if not properly addressed, could lead to various issues with the application. The purpose of this research work is to provide a strategy for managing the state of a modern frontend web application to avoid common state-related pitfalls that could arise in the lifetime of an application. To achieve this goal, the thesis work provides a guideline that answers the questions on what should be considered when choosing a state management system and how the states of a frontend application should be handled. To show the effectiveness of this guideline, a case study was conducted on an application called Nokia Test Automation Platform (NTAP) which is an automated test-line solution developed at Nokia. The case study involved re-implementing the NTAP state management system based on the proposed strategy and then comparing the results of similar tests taken before and after the re-implementation. The result of this work includes the identification of features of frontend state and frontend state management, a strategy for modern frontend web state management and the re-implementation of the state management system of NTAP.