Debuggeando caché y networking

How to inspect API consumption in your browser?

Dealing with API consumption can be a challenge if you don't have the right tools to understand what's going on. In this segment, I'll show you how to use the Network tab in your browser's inspector to debug and observe the inner workings of API consumption in your application. This tool is essential for analyzing performance and troubleshooting load issues in your projects.

How to clone and open your project?

The first step is to make sure you have your project locally. For that, we must download it using Git from the GitHub repository where it is hosted. Use the following commands in your terminal:

# Switch to your project directorycd mycourses
 # Clone the repositorygit clone <URL_DEL_REPOSITORY>
 # Enter the cloned project directorycd course-API-REST-JavaScript-professional
 # Open the project in your code editorcode . -r

How to configure your API Key?

The MovieDB API requires an API Key to perform queries. Follow these steps to set it up:

1. Create a secrets.js file in the src directory.
2. Add your API Key as a constant:

   const API_KEY = 'YOUR_API_KEY_HERE';

3. Get your API Key from themoviedb.org/settings/api by creating an account if you don't have one yet.

How to use the Network tab?

This browser tab is powerful. It allows us to see the load time of each resource and identify performance issues. Let's load the page, inspect the resources and analyze our HTTP requests:

1. Reload Page: Use the 'Empty Cache and Hard Reload' option to reload the page completely and observe loads from scratch.
2. Observe Requests: Look at the sizes and times of HTTP requests. The browser automatically implements a caching strategy, which improves performance when loading previously requested information.
3. Cache vs. Memoization: Analyze how the browser caches information versus using memoization, which stores the results in a JavaScript object.

Which is the more effective optimization strategy?

The browser already does a good job of caching. However, optimizing the rest of the resources such as images and scripts is still critical. Best practices include:

• Conditional Image Loading: Load images only when they are visible.
• Pagination: Implement pagination to improve performance when handling large lists of data.
• Use Local Storage: Store data locally for quick access without the need for new server requests.

These practices will save you bandwidth and speed up your application. You can experiment with different configurations in the Network tab of your browser to find what best suits your needs.

What other optimization strategies can you use?

We want to know your opinion and experiences. When do you think it would be better to use another caching strategy or a different alternative to the proposed one? Leave your suggestions and experiences in the comments. Let's have an enriching and fruitful discussion on this topic.

Remember that optimization is not a final product, but a continuous process of improvement. I'll be happy to answer any questions and continue exploring this exciting world with you in our next classes, see you in the next session where we'll dive even deeper into frontend project optimization!