Can Ionic Be Used for Web Development?
Yes, the Ionic framework can be used for web development but only for frontend web development. it comes loaded with a lot of UI components that you can use to quickly construct the User Interface for your web application.
Ionic is engineered to work seamlessly with some of the top Javascript frontend frameworks. You can use Angular, React, or Vue to develop a user interface for your app. Ionic also allows you to use vanilla Javascript to develop UIs without any frameworks.
You cannot use ionic for a full-stack web application because Ionic does not come with a backend infrastructure, it is purely a frontend framework. You will need to use other technologies on the backend such as Python Django, Node.js, Ruby on Rails, PHP, Java, Go, etc.
Ionic has many useful UI components for web applications, most components are engineered for mobile applications but there are many components that are great for web applications. These components include Buttons, cards, checkboxes, badges, date & time pickers, progress indicators, tabs, and many others.
WHAT IS THE IONIC FRAMEWORK USED FOR?
The ionic framework is used to build cross-platform mobile, desktop, and web applications from one codebase using web technologies. This makes it very easy and inexpensive to build and maintain applications for different platforms.
There are many companies using the Ionic Framework, some of the popular ones include the National Health Services (NHS), Target, Panda Express, Mauritius Revenue Authority, Cisco, CAT, Sanvello, Southwest Airlines, Airbus Helicopters, T-Mobile, Disney, BBC, Siberian CMS, and many others.
Most of these companies use the Ionic framework for mobile app development, only a few companies use it for frontend web application development. it is worth noting that Ionic is very popular for mobile app development but it is not popular for web development.
If you want to build a full-stack web application, you can use Ionic on the client-side with any backend technology of your choice. Use can use HTTP requests to get all the data that you need for your web application.
WHAT SERVER-SIDE LANGUAGES CAN I USE WITH IONIC?
Here are some of the popular server-side programming languages that you can use with the Ionic framework for your applications.
PHP
PHP is the most popular server-side programming language, it powers more websites on the internet than the rest of the server-side programming languages put together.
According to statistics from w3techs.com, “PHP is used by 77.5% of all the websites whose server-side programming language we know.” PHP website usage has been decreasing over the years, but it will take more than 25 years to decrease to 50% at the rate at which it is decreasing.
To make your development process easy, quick, and well structured, you can use PHP frameworks such as Laravel, Symfony, CodeIgniter, Slim, Zend, Phalcon, CakePHP, and many others.
PHP is used by many popular platforms and websites such as WordPress, Drupal, Wikipedia, Facebook, Slack, Etsy, Tumblr, MailChimp, etc. PHP is simple to work with and you will do a lot with just a few lines of code.
NODE.JS
Node.js is an open-source Javascript runtime environment that runs on the V8 Engine. It is cross-platform and is used to run Javascript outside of the web browser. Node.js is used by web developers for server scripting.
It is commonly used in the Javascript stack such as the MERN (MongoDB, Express.js, React, Node) and MEAN (MongoDB, Express, Angular, Node) Stack. To make it easy to work with Node.js, frameworks such as Express.js, Sails.js, Koa.js, etc. are popularly used.
If you like working with Javascript, you will enjoy working with Node.js and Ionic.
PYTHON
Python has an easy-to-understand syntax that makes it easy to write code, getting started with Python is very easy and straightforward. Python is used a lot by web developers for backend development. According to a 2021 Stack Overflow survey, Python is the third most used programming language by professional developers.
Python Django is one of the most popular web development frameworks, it was used to build part of the Instagram backend. Other python web frameworks that can be used include Flask, FastAPI, CherryPy, Falcon, etc.
GO
Go is an open-source programming language supported by Google, Go is used in web development to power fast and scalable web applications. Some of the companies using Go are shown in the image below
JAVA
You can also use Java for server-side programming. Java is used by many websites, especially in the enterprise world. You can learn more about how Java is used in Web Development in our article DO YOU NEED JAVA FOR WEB DEVELOPMENT.
RUBY
Since its invention in 1995 by Yukihiro “Matz” Matsumoto of Japan, Ruby has grown in popularity and usage to become the third most widely used server-side programming language after PHP and ASP.NET.
According to statistics from w3techs.com, “Ruby is used by 5.9% of all the websites whose server-side programming language we know.” Ruby usage for making websites has been decreasing over the years, but it is still one of the popular choices for many companies and startups.
Ruby is easy to work with, its syntax is simple, elegant, and English-like, similar to that of Python. Getting started with Ruby and Ruby on Rails for web development is very easy and you will serve a lot of development time by using this language and its framework.
The popular online E-commerce store builder Shopify was written in Ruby (Ruby on Rails). Other popular websites using Ruby include Twitter, Github, Basecamp, Airbnb, Dribbble, Hulu, Kickstarter, Zendesk, Fiverr, SoundCloud, and many others.
There are many other server-side programming languages that you can use that I have not listed here. These languages will help you to build backends for web applications easily and efficiently.
CONCLUSION
It can be seen that Ionic can be used for web development, but it is worth noting that ionic is only used for front-end web development. It has many UI components that make it easy and quick to make a beautiful user interface.
If you want to make a website but you do not want to write any server-side or frontend code, you can use Website builders like, Shopify, WordPress, Wix, Zyro, Squarespace, Weebly, Bubble, etc. to do all the heavy lifting for you. You can make powerful websites without writing any line of code.