In the previous article we created our first Polymer Web Component using Test-Driven Development approach. While all the specifications we wrote were implemented, there are still few things we should do to polish this component. The tc-book-form currently has the form with all the input fields required by the back-end. It also has buttons to add or update and delete a book. Those buttons are calling iron-ajax Polymer element that sends requests to the back-end. Both front-end (in form of Web Component) and back-end are developed as a single microservice.

The next task in front of us is to polish the component. Later on in this series we’ll create another component that will list all books. We’ll also develop the code that will enable us to establish communication between those two components. Once we’re done with both, we’ll explore ways to integrate the microservices we developed into a separate Web Application.

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In this article series we’ll go through Web Components development in context of microservices. We’ll use Polymer as the library that will help us out. The objective is to create a microservice that will handle full functionality. The service will contain not only back-end API (as is the case with most microservices) but also front-end in form of Web Components. Later on, when the time comes to use the service we’re creating, we’ll simply import Web Components. That is quite a different approach than what you might be used to. We won’t create a Web Application that calls APIs handled by microservices. We’ll import parts of the front-end from microservices. Our objective is to have a microservice that contains everything; from front-end to back-end. Please refer to the Including Front-End Web Components Into Microservices article for more information that lead to this decision.

I am a huge fan of Test-Driven Development so we’ll write all the code using test first approach. We’ll write a test, run all tests and confirm that the last one fails, write implementation, run all tests and confirm that all passed. Tests will act as executable specifications. We’ll use them to define what should be implemented. If you are new to TDD and the concept of executable documentation, please read the article Tests As Documentation.

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