SPAs Are Dead?

https://leastprivilege.com/2020/03/31/spas-are-dead/

by wstrange • 5 years ago

99 113 5 years ago

stepbeek2• 5 years ago

Maybe I'm missing something, but this seems like a very narrow definition of SPA. A SPA can just sit on a different path from the API server and cross-site cookies aren't a problem. For instance, www.example.com/app and www.example.com/api

weird-eye-issue3• 5 years ago

This is how I prefer to do it. No CORS pre-flight requests and messing with CORS settings

yitianjian• 5 years ago

Seconding (thirding?) this.

I'm curious, are there any SPAs that aren't done this way?

billti• 5 years ago

That's what I moved our stuff too, because it was just easier for a number of reasons (cookies and CORS stuff being amongst them). Any calls to other domains are done through the API hosting on the site domain.

He does allude to that at the end of the post though: "So are SPAs dead? ... SPAs as in “browser-based standalone applications that do cross-site authentication and API calls in the context of a modern identity and SSO architectures” – yes.". That is a narrower definition though.

tshaddox2• 5 years ago

Indeed, the intended audience seems to developers of SPAs which only use third-party authentication and data. The article even mentions "pretty much every authentication protocol – like SAML, WS-Fed and OpenID Connect." I'm obviously not in this intended audience, because in my experience this is an extremely niche SPA use case. I can't even think of a website that does this or would want to do this. Maybe if you want to build a third-party web client for something like Gmail or Apple Music?

stepbeek2• 5 years ago

In enterprise environments, I can see that being a problem. Tools like SAML are more prevalent when SSO is used.

timw4mail2• 5 years ago

Cookies suck. The interface is beyond terrible, they were never scoped properly, and they don't have to be used.

Browser storage (sessionStorage, localStorage) is perfectly valid for storing an authentication token.

kostarelo• 5 years ago

By interface you mean.. the HTTP protocol? At least they can be scoped on the domain level. Browser storage can't.

leipert3• 5 years ago

Local storage and Session Storage are scoped per origin as well: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Glossary/Origin

kadfak• 5 years ago

Leaking your auth tokens through XSS sucks more.

leipert3• 5 years ago

I don’t know whether you are referring to only local and session storage being feasible or not, but on can access cookies from JS as well.

asabil• 5 years ago

If you have an xss your problem is much bigger than leaking an ephemeral access token through localStorage

midrus5• 5 years ago

No, it is not. And I hope I never end up using any application developed this way.

Tokens stored in those storages you mention can be read by any javascript code, even third party.

That doesn't happen with http-only cookies.

Be careful with what you recommend publicly, as others might end up assuming this is fine, when it is clearly not.

warent• 5 years ago

If your third party libraries are so poisoned that you're leaking localstorage, you've got bigger problems than just localstorage... This argument against using localstorage makes no sense

rwieruch• 5 years ago

Related to this I was always wondering where to store refresh tokens when using both, access token and refresh token. Reference: https://stackoverflow.com/q/57650692

timw4mail2• 5 years ago

So the article is about being unable to access third-party cookies due to browser privacy updates.

1. If you are using Http-only cookies, these are clearly unrelated. 2. If you are sharing an authentication token with the browser, cookie or not, it can be read by any scripts on the same origin.

So...what exactly are you trying to say?

wayneftw2• 5 years ago

Meh. Working at a consulting shop I've seen hundreds of apps built with tokens stored in the big bad localStorage. It's easy, it works and if you don't load scripts from untrustworthy sources then there is no attack vector outside of rendering un-sanitized user input as HTML or browser extensions.

We've dealt with plenty of security issues and exactly zero of them centered around XSS. I've seen more issues surrounding bad dependencies that could end up running right inside your API server. Browser extensions can do so many other things, like reading all the forms and middling your API requests. So, I can't take responsibility for that.

I would recommend http-only cookies over localStorage, but if you protect yourself in other ways then putting auth tokens in localStorage is not the end of the world. It hasn't ever affected us, so I'll leave the pearl-clutching over this up to the experts.

inetknght• 5 years ago

And I hope I never end up using any application developed this way.

Slack [0] has entered the chat.

Jira [1] has entered that chat.

I could go on but I don't need to. Many web applications that people use store an unnecessarily obnoxious amount of data locally. I can only imagine how much of that is used just once or possibly even never (like images in settings windows that were never accessed).

[0]: On one instance of Firefox on one computer, app.slack.com has stored 1.9GB. On another instance of Firefox on another computer, app.slack.com has stored about 633KB. On a third instance of Firefox on yet another computer, app.slack.com has stored about 600MB.

[1]: Jira doesn't load _at all_ if you've got any secure settings enabled (like... no CORS and no cross-domain cookies and no cross-domain XHRs and ... the list goes on). So Jira loads in an incognito window in a VM. But suffice to say that its local storage is even more _fucking obnoxious_.

Tokens stored in those storages you mention can be read by any javascript code, even third party.

I don't doubt you. But I am not a javascript developer. I'd like it if you could link to some demonstrations of how that can be abused.

notsureaboutpg• 5 years ago

localStorage doesn't work in many browsers' private modes, so no... it's not

paxys• 5 years ago

Sounds like an overreaction. The only thing affected by the browser changes is some third party authentication mechanisms, and those can be easily fixed (as mentioned in the article itself).

pier252• 5 years ago

I prefer using cookies, but most SPAs actually use JWTs.

jakelazaroff2• 5 years ago

Cookies and JWTs are not alternatives to each other. You can store a JWT in a cookie.

shock-value4• 5 years ago

You can also store a JWT in localStorage and require an additional secure signature for it within a cookie (http-only). Best of both worlds.

pier252• 5 years ago

True, although in the vast majority of cases JWTs are sent via HTTP headers (specially if you're making requests to multiple domains).

rory• 5 years ago

The general trend here seems that browser security improvements are more likely to kill core-function-of-your-app-as-a-service type software products, rather than SPAs in general or in particular.

ngrilly• 5 years ago

I don’t like the click bait title, but the conclusion is interesting.

jessaustin• 5 years ago

SPAs as in the UI/UX concept certainly not. SPAs as in “browser-based standalone applications that do cross-site authentication and API calls in the context of a modern identity and SSO architectures” – yes.

Has the latter ever been a definition of "SPA"? One would have thought the acronym "single page application" to have been fairly precise...

shortlived• 5 years ago

Sounds like JAM stack to me

andrewstuart22• 5 years ago

And the latter is not even true unless I missed something significant. It's just lazy implementations thereof that are dead. Having developed SPAs for much of my career, I did plenty of cross-site login and work never realizing third party cookies were even an option. I just figured they were bad practice and that oauth2, understanding the limitations of web frontend oauth2 security (e.g. can't really do a full authenticated client without a backend to keep secret the client secret), and using proper CORS was the right way to do it. I think that's the way forward with the removal of third party cookies, is it not?

I guess I'm more surprised that somebody was using third party cookies for non-tracking purposes than I am surprised they're being removed.

Some people recommend replacing silent renew with refresh tokens. This is dangerous advice – even if your token service has implemented countermeasures.

If I follow the link the author is clearly talking about public clients, which are always going to have significant security limitations. Somewhere else on the site he mentions BFF (backend for frontend) architecture as a mitigation. Which I kinda thought was the whole point of confidential vs public oauth2. The spec is super clear that public is less secure which is just the nature of security; if you have to ship a secret to someone who shouldn't know it, but they need to use it, you're kinda out of luck.

I think I'm picking up that the author's definition of SPA is also assuming no back-end, in which case many of the security points make a lot more sense. But even if you just throw out a secure authenticating proxy, which can be done with very little code and a few off-the-shelf and OSS products, you're back in business and more secure than ever.

throwaway185205• 5 years ago

If I can trust 2018 OAuth-as-a-service vendor literature, it seems popular to signify "use grant flow X because your app has no backend."

arendtio5• 5 years ago

What the article completely ignores, is the fact, that building cross site apps has been next to impossible for a long time. Since you can't contact a server who doesn't explicitly allows connections via CORS, your browser based app doomed.

And I write this as someone who would love to build apps all day with web technologies.

kreetx6• 5 years ago

I don't quite get what you mean. If the cross-origin server (to your app) wants to be consumed then it will respond with the correct headers. And if the server is under your control then you can configure it so.

zyemuzu• 5 years ago

This. I suppose that's what has me confused about both the blog post and comment, i.e. why would you not control your servers?

arendtio5• 5 years ago

For non-browser apps the server doesn't have to explicitly allow it. A simple curl can access any server it wants. If y browser based apps wants to access another server, that server needs to be configured to allow it (because of the Same Origin Policy) and how many servers do you know that allow anybody to access them via CORS?

So take for example a WebDAV server. In theory, you could build a web based app, that can access any WebDAV server out there on the internet. In practice, that WebDAV server requires a special CORS configuration in order to be accessible via a browser from a different origin. Any other normal desktop app doesn't care about CORS and can access any server it has credentials for, no matter what configuration it has.

sly010• 5 years ago

What the author describes was never a good idea anyway imho. We will just have to learn to point a subdomain to third party servers.

echelon• 5 years ago

Or services we integrate with will have to start emitting the correct headers.

_nhh• 5 years ago

I am currently involved in a app development where a single code base is deployed to several platforms.

Cors is being a topic for the last two month. I am increasingly concerned about the future of javascript webapps and its build targets like cordova/capacitor/electron because there is no single cors configuration which fits all build targets :(

hawski4• 5 years ago

I hoped that designers learned something and decided to stop the war against their users. I did not hold my breath.

To clarify I have nothing against actual web applications like an image editor or a game. However a wiki (I don't appreciate Notion), an online shop or a damned blog should not be one. I want my history, link copying, bookmarking, middle-clicks and Ctrl/Cmd-clicks to work as intended.

tomComb• 5 years ago

I want all those things too, but not clear on how you think notion should be implemented.

I use it exclusively in the browser on a laptop. I find it slow but I do not think that is the fault of browser tech or SPA architecture, and I assume it will get addressed.

jmkni• 5 years ago

I want my history, link copying, bookmarking, middle-clicks and Ctrl/Cmd-clicks to work as intended.

In a well designed SPA, these will all work.

hawski4• 5 years ago

It's like with C or C++. Most people that do write it shouldn't, because they are not good enough or the process is broken and they will shoot their leg. SPAs are the same way, because you have to implement all those normal website things again by yourself. There will be casualties.

adrr2• 5 years ago

They work perfectly fine under a SPA. SPA pushes history which lets the back button work and you can bookmark the URls. They have real URLs so you can create tabs.

Go look at https://www.target.com/ and see if you can tell difference between SPA and regular web page except for the speed aspect.

amelius• 5 years ago

If you have a history with multiple pages each with their own URI then it is not a SPA. SPA means "single page application".

darau1• 5 years ago

Long ago Ruby on rails had a feature that sort of cached all links on the current page to make navigating to them faster. What happened to that? Would that not provide the same speed benefit? I'm ignoring the inefficient use of data here, ofc.

yurielt• 5 years ago

and decided to stop the war against their users The thing is that the question is who are their actual users? Truth is just that we arent the actual users, by we I mean the tech savvy crowd we are a minorityand form what I have seen the majority of the users of notion are happier with they way it has evolved, and at the end of the day notion and places like it are going to follow that, I dont like it but this is usually what the war against their "users" is a byproduct of.

hawski4• 5 years ago

Every single day I see my wife and relatives struggle with modern computing. Not to say that previously it was much better, but web applications are increasingly different between each other in the way they work. They are not tech savvy, but are bitten in the ass by everything that computers have to offer, especially web pages. I am angry, because I know how it can all work better or see bunch of bugs in almost anything I use, but I can form quite easily workarounds, they can't.

therealx• 5 years ago

Isn't it so relieving now that the pendulum is swinging back?

I'm so glad I moved into C# and non-web dev/management and got out of that rat race. Tech always swings back and forth, but I'm so very happy to have made it past SPAs being the end all be all.

dragonwriter3• 5 years ago

I want my history, link copying, bookmarking, middle-clicks and Ctrl/Cmd-clicks to work as intended.

Solutions for all of those for SPAs have been around for quite a while. Whether any particular SPA uses them or not is, of course, variable, but there is nothing inherent to SPAs that prevents them from working.

tshaddox2• 5 years ago

In fact, in every modern JavaScript framework or rendering library I'm aware of, you have to go out of your way to make links that don't work with middle-click or page navigations that don't work with history and bookmarks.

gibsonf1• 5 years ago

I think SPA's are alive and well using the Solid project [1] with Inrupt's auth library[2] that supports Open ID Connect PKCE with dpop tokens.

[1] https://solidproject.org/ [2] https://github.com/inrupt/solid-client-authn-js

austincheney2• 5 years ago

A better way to think about it: Who wants SPAs more, UI developers or their users?

If the demands of the developers out pace the demands of their users AND those demands primarily determine product design decisions the product is not all designed to benefit the user despite developers pleadings to the contrary. That is a very pronounced example of bias.

CivBase• 5 years ago

Users just want pages to load fast. UI developers (presumably) just want to maximize user happiness.

A SPA is just a way to front-load resources for a website so users don't have to re-load redundant resources for each new page. Whether that is actually worthwhile for the user depends largely on how many redundant resources a site has and how many pages a user is likely to request in a single session. SPAs are a situationally useful tech just like blockchain, machine learning, JS component frameworks, etc.

austincheney2• 5 years ago

It’s hard to know what users want if those wants are assumed, which serves to reinforce bias.

takeda• 5 years ago

Why authors of these blog posts assume that everyone know what the context is? Even if one assume the term is related to computing and technology, there's 4 different things named SPA. Is it that hard to expand the term in the title or in the beginning of the blog to help people quickly decide if they are interested in it or not?

Sorry for the rant, but this is not the first time the article forced me to read it before I could decide if I'm interested in it.

jeppebemad• 5 years ago

To be fair, most of the blogposts are not written for us on HN, but for the followers of the blog in question. I do not mind having to figure out the context, if it means I get to explore the esoteric and far corners of the internet from one place :)

maxharris• 5 years ago

I did web dev professionally for seven years until I started writing Swift a year ago. The learning curve for native iOS development is a little steep because Apple doesn't write adequate documentation, but resulting application delivers a superb user experience with extremely low power consumption.

Web apps and APIs are not the answer to the biggest problem we have today, which is the lack of open alternatives to Apple's App Store and Google's Play Store. While it is true that Apple cripples their browser to make web apps second-class citizens, browsers will always add a layer of indirection. Even if the performance loss were made negligible, it would encourage the creation of user interfaces that target the lowest common denominator available on all platforms.

In my opinion, the best way to fix this situation in the long-run is to design completely open mobile devices. I'd love to replace my iPhone and iPad with devices that are repairable and run a mobile-optimized version of Haiku. We're not as far off from that as you might think; metal 3D printers such as the Markforged Metal X will make it easier and cheaper than ever to make cases that turn a pile of parts into a working phone.

What does this have to do with web apps? Well, if you're spending all your time keeping up with web development, perhaps it's time to learn some new skills and push things forward in a different direction.

pgt• 5 years ago

The Web After Tomorrow by Nikita Tonsky: https://tonsky.me/blog/the-web-after-tomorrow/

SPAs Are Dead?

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