ASP.NET WebForms - Introducing offline capabilities

Question

I currently have a web forms page that users use to control data sitting in an Azure SQL database.

With each postback, a grid is drawn and populated with data pulled from said database.

The client has requested that offline functionality needs to be introduced. This means that the application needs to be able to switch to another grid with a whole new set of data, while offline.

What my question is, is:
What would be the best way to accomplish this? I've begun using IndexedDb to bridge the connection gap somewhat but this is not enough.
What is the best solution here? I am open to new technologies such as Blazor etc.

Answer 1

normally for offline, you use a service worker. see:

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Service_Worker_API

service workers also have access to indexDB (which in current browsers is implemented with SQLite)

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/IndexedDB_API

these two technologies are generally combined to create a PWA.

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Progressive_web_apps

note: if you are interested in Blazor, only Blazor WSAM can work offline. You can build a PWA with Blazor, but the service worker must still be written in javascript. A WASM can not directly access indexDB (same as it can not access dom, ajax or fileapi) but can call host. Blazor does this by an interop library.

Answer 2

@Brydon Johnstone Blazor WASM is an excellent choice for building web applications with offline capabilities.
Please go through our detailed documentation here and let us know if you have any further questions.

Blazored LocalStorage is a library that provides access to the browser's local storage APIs for Blazor applications.

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