Mocking up the UI

In the first few chapters of this book, we created a car database backend that provides the RESTful API. Now, it is time to start building the frontend for our application. We will create a frontend that lists cars from the database and provides paging, sorting, and filtering. There is a button that opens the modal form to add new cars to the database. In each row of the car table, there is a button to delete or edit the car from the database. The frontend contains a link or button to export data from the table to a CSV file.

Let's create a mock-up from our UI. There are lots of different applications for creating mock-ups, or you can even use a pencil and paper. You can also create interactive mock- ups to demonstrate a number of functionalities. If you have done a mock-up, it is much easier to discuss requirements with the client before you start to write any actual code. With the mock-up, it is also easier for the client to understand the idea of the frontend...