Table of ContentsChoosing the Right API for Single Page ApplicationStep 1: Signup for RapidAPI AccountStep 2: Discovering APIsStep 3: Analysing the API Step 4: Finalizing the API Step 5: Subscribing to the APIStep 6: Validating the APIHow to Build a Single-Page App (SPA) on Vue.JSPrerequisitesSteps for Building the Currency App with Vue CLI1. Create a new Vue project2. Create the Vue UI components3. Define the App route4. Store the history of currency conversion operations5. Define the main component6. Define main.js for spawning the App 7. Build & Run the AppSumming Up With A Quick Test Of The Currency AppIf you are building a web application with the API-first approach, then you have to think of leveraging external APIs to execute part of your application logic. Single-page applications are a perfect candidate for building such Apps. These Apps allow the web browser to re-render different parts of the web page dynamically, by invoking APIs. These renders are independent of the entire web page and hence do not require a full reload of the page. Over the last decade, single-page applications have gained much popularity, thanks to the underlying advancements in the browsers and the web protocols. Additionally, the API revolution has empowered developers with more options to define the business logic as API calls, instead of writing the logic themselves. In this post, we are going to show you how to build a demo single page application (SPA) by leveraging the power of the RapidAPI’s API marketplace, on top of the Vue.JS framework. Vue.JS is an upcoming JavaScript framework for building modular, UI driven web applications. With this demo, you will learn about building a basic UI layout for the web application along with the intricacies of invoking the API and interacting with the UI elements through Vue.JS. Choosing the Right API for Single Page ApplicationA single page application relies on AJAX calls to request the server for updates, even after the application is fully loaded. It typically follows this interaction sequence.As a web developer, this is probably a no-brainer for you. However, depending upon the requirements of your application, the AJAX calls must be directed to appropriate external APIs to achieve the functionality of the App. Let’s run through a hypothetical scenario to choose the best API from the RapidAPI marketplace. Step 1: Signup for RapidAPI AccountTo begin your API-First development journey, you’ll first need to sign up for a free RapidAPI developer account. With this account, you get a universal API Key to access all APIs hosted in RapidAPI.RapidAPI is the world’s largest API marketplace, with over 10,000 APIs and a community of over 1,000,000 developers. Our goal is to help developers find and connect to APIs to help them build amazing apps.With RapidAPI’s marketplace, you have many options to choose the best API for your single page application development requirements covering different industries, domains, and use cases.  Step 2: Discovering APIsWhile choosing an APIs for your single page application project, you need to pay attention to your application requirements. Often, these requirements depend on a domain or specific expertise, which is otherwise challenging to code within your application. Log into your RapidAPI account. The home page has many options to discover APIs as per your needs. You can either search for APIs based on a keyword, or choose from one of the predefined categories, and even select from the collection of top APIs for a given domain.Let’s do a quick exercise to choose a good API for the development of our Vue.JS based single page application. Assuming that you want to build an App for a forex service, then your App frequently performs conversion from one currency to another. In the RapidAPI website, you can search for “currency”. Alternatively, you can look up the top currency converter and exchange APIs to get a curated list of top currency and exchange APIs hosted in the marketplace. Step 3: Analysing the API For each API, you can see the basic analytics about the popularity, latency, and its success rate.  As an example, if you want to consider the Currency Value API, you can see its stats to get some idea about the API’s popularity & reliability. Note that these stats change from time to time based on the API provider’s performance. Connect to the Fixer Currency APIApart from this, you can also access the API console of the APIs to explore endpoints, documentation, and pricing options. Step 4: Finalizing the API Now, let’s get serious about the API selection. If you want to choose an API that has an excellent rating and maximum reliability, then take another look at the stats of all the API listed in the list of top currency and exchange APIs. Based on the performance of all APIs at the time of writing this article,  you get two APIs that are performing well. These are the Fixer Currency API and Currency Converter API. Both have a 100% success rate, which is very good for reliability, and both of them enjoy a popularity score of 9.8 out of 10. However, the Currency Converter API seems to have a latency of 78 ms, which is very, very low, and this means that the API is fast. On the other hand, the Fixer Currency API has a latency of 275ms, which is nearly four times more.Considering this, the Currency Converter API should be your first choice. However, you should not fall for the latency values, as certain APIs are less complicated and hence tend to have less latency with the downside of having lesser accuracy.   If you read the description of both the APIs, then you will realize that Fixer Currency API relies on over 15 exchanges to give you the currency data. In contrast, the Currency Converter API does not make such claims. Considering that a normalized currency rate based on over fifteen exchanges would be a better bet, you can decide to go ahead with the Fixer Currency API. As for the higher latency, a value of 275ms is not a bad number considering the average latencies of packet transfer across the Internet. Therefore, Fixer Currency API is our choice for powering the currency conversion within the forex conversion app.  Step 5: Subscribing to the APIWith the API selection done, it’s time to test the API. Head over to the API console of Fixer Currency API. Click on the “Pricing” tab and opt-in for the “Basic” subscription tier that gives you 1000 free API calls to Fixer Currency API per month.Once subscribed, you can validate your subscription to this API. Take a look at the supported API endpoints of Fixer Currency API, at the left panel of the API console.Select the “GET Supported Symbols” endpoint from the list of API endpoints. This API endpoint does not accept any input parameters, so you can directly invoke it by clicking the blue “Test Endpoint” button.If you get an API response with a list of supported currencies, your subscription is now working.Connect to the Fixer Currency APISumming Up With A Quick Test Of The Currency AppIf you are building a web application with the API-first approach, then you have to think of leveraging external APIs to execute part of your application logic. Single-page applications are a perfect candidate for building such Apps. These Apps allow the web browser to re-render different parts of the web page dynamically, by invoking APIs. These renders are independent of the entire web page and hence do not require a full reload of the page. Over the last decade, single-page applications have gained much popularity, thanks to the underlying advancements in the browsers and the web protocols. Additionally, the API revolution has empowered developers with more options to define the business logic as API calls, instead of writing the logic themselves. In this post, we are going to show you how to build a demo single page application (SPA) by leveraging the power of the RapidAPI’s API marketplace, on top of the Vue.JS framework. Vue.JS is an upcoming JavaScript framework for building modular, UI driven web applications. With this demo, you will learn about building a basic UI layout for the web application along with the intricacies of invoking the API and interacting with the UI elements through Vue.JS. Choosing the Right API for Single Page ApplicationA single page application relies on AJAX calls to request the server for updates, even after the application is fully loaded. It typically follows this interaction sequence.As a web developer, this is probably a no-brainer for you. However, depending upon the requirements of your application, the AJAX calls must be directed to appropriate external APIs to achieve the functionality of the App. Let’s run through a hypothetical scenario to choose the best API from the RapidAPI marketplace. Step 1: Signup for RapidAPI AccountTo begin your API-First development journey, you’ll first need to sign up for a free RapidAPI developer account. With this account, you get a universal API Key to access all APIs hosted in RapidAPI.RapidAPI is the world’s largest API marketplace, with over 10,000 APIs and a community of over 1,000,000 developers. Our goal is to help developers find and connect to APIs to help them build amazing apps.With RapidAPI’s marketplace, you have many options to choose the best API for your single page application development requirements covering different industries, domains, and use cases.  Step 2: Discovering APIsWhile choosing an APIs for your single page application project, you need to pay attention to your application requirements. Often, these requirements depend on a domain or specific expertise, which is otherwise challenging to code within your application. Log into your RapidAPI account. The home page has many options to discover APIs as per your needs. You can either search for APIs based on a keyword, or choose from one of the predefined categories, and even select from the collection of top APIs for a given domain.Let’s do a quick exercise to choose a good API for the development of our Vue.JS based single page application. Assuming that you want to build an App for a forex service, then your App frequently performs conversion from one currency to another. In the RapidAPI website, you can search for “currency”. Alternatively, you can look up the top currency converter and exchange APIs to get a curated list of top currency and exchange APIs hosted in the marketplace. Step 3: Analysing the API For each API, you can see the basic analytics about the popularity, latency, and its success rate.  As an example, if you want to consider the Currency Value API, you can see its stats to get some idea about the API’s popularity & reliability. Note that these stats change from time to time based on the API provider’s performance. Connect to the Fixer Currency APIApart from this, you can also access the API console of the APIs to explore endpoints, documentation, and pricing options. Step 4: Finalizing the API Now, let’s get serious about the API selection. If you want to choose an API that has an excellent rating and maximum reliability, then take another look at the stats of all the API listed in the list of top currency and exchange APIs. Based on the performance of all APIs at the time of writing this article,  you get two APIs that are performing well. These are the Fixer Currency API and Currency Converter API. Both have a 100% success rate, which is very good for reliability, and both of them enjoy a popularity score of 9.8 out of 10. However, the Currency Converter API seems to have a latency of 78 ms, which is very, very low, and this means that the API is fast. On the other hand, the Fixer Currency API has a latency of 275ms, which is nearly four times more.Considering this, the Currency Converter API should be your first choice. However, you should not fall for the latency values, as certain APIs are less complicated and hence tend to have less latency with the downside of having lesser accuracy.   If you read the description of both the APIs, then you will realize that Fixer Currency API relies on over 15 exchanges to give you the currency data. In contrast, the Currency Converter API does not make such claims. Considering that a normalized currency rate based on over fifteen exchanges would be a better bet, you can decide to go ahead with the Fixer Currency API. As for the higher latency, a value of 275ms is not a bad number considering the average latencies of packet transfer across the Internet. Therefore, Fixer Currency API is our choice for powering the currency conversion within the forex conversion app.  Step 5: Subscribing to the APIWith the API selection done, it’s time to test the API. Head over to the API console of Fixer Currency API. Click on the “Pricing” tab and opt-in for the “Basic” subscription tier that gives you 1000 free API calls to Fixer Currency API per month.Once subscribed, you can validate your subscription to this API. Take a look at the supported API endpoints of Fixer Currency API, at the left panel of the API console.Select the “GET Supported Symbols” endpoint from the list of API endpoints. This API endpoint does not accept any input parameters, so you can directly invoke it by clicking the blue “Test Endpoint” button.If you get an API response with a list of supported currencies, your subscription is now working.Connect to the Fixer Currency APISumming Up With A Quick Test Of The Currency AppFire up a web browser and launch the app with the URL of the development server.  You can now play with the currencies and their values to get the instantly converted rates. That brings up to the end of this demo on building a single page application with RapidAPI and Vue.JS. If you have any questions about integrating the APIs from RapidAPI in your Vue.JS App, then please send your queries in the comments below.  5/5 - (1 vote)« Top 10 Best Java REST and Microservice Frameworks (2021)How to Call an API from WordPress (in a Plugin) [Example] »Related Blog Posts How to Use the Telize API with Python, PHP, Ruby & Javascript Examples How to Use the Currency Exchange API with PHP, Python, Ruby & JavaScript Examples How to Use the Love Calculator API with Python, PHP, Ruby & JavaScript Examples Monolithic vs Microservices Comparison: Which is the Best Architecture? Flutter vs. React Native: Which Do Developers’ Use More How to build a REST API with Node.js – Part 1Filed Under: JavaScript API Tutorials, REST API Tutorials, Vue.js API Tutorials Tagged With: currency, fixer, javascript, single page application, spa, vue.jsShyam PurkayasthaShyam is the Founder of Radiostud.io, a content-lead innovation studio, focusing on showcasing use cases of emerging technologies. He's an entrepreneur, a technology evangelist, author, and mentor with a deep passion for nurturing ideas and building things around emerging and futuristic trends in Computing, Information Technology, and Telecommunications.GitHub | LinkedInSearch this websiteReader InteractionsLeave a Reply Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *CommentName * Email * ΔPrimary SidebarBuild anything with APIs, faster.Discover, evaluate, and integrate with any API. 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