Hack-a-thon #3: Building an Async Bookstore

Remember our billion-dollar Bookstore Hack-A-Thon? This week, we're going to connect the Bookstore to an honest-to-goodness RESTful JSON API. Good Luck:

1. Start where you left off with Part One of our bookstore project. We should have a number of books set up in an Array, plus a form element that can be used to add a new book to the existing product list. Remember, book Array (and Objects) should take the form:

   const books = [
     {
       "id": 1,
       "name": "Lasagna: A Retrospective",
       "author": "Garfield"
       "picture_url": "http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2015/10/15/   dining/15RECIPE20DIN/15RECIPE20DIN-articleLarge.jpg",
       "price": 24,
       "selling_points": [
           "Lasagna is delicious.",
           "The essential guide to Italian casseroles of all types.",
           "Real G's move silent, like Lasagna. -Lil Wayne"
       ]
     },
     // plus a few more Objects
   ];

2. Make sure that you have functional components that can be rendered with a single render function. Something like:

   function render(state) {
     root.innerHTML = `
       ${Navigation()}
       ${Header()}
       ${Content(state)}
       ${Form()}
       ${Footer()}
     `;
   }
   
   render(books);

3. At this point, Content should be able to handle the Array of books. Last time, we didn't know about loops of any kind, so the Book component looked something like:

   import Book from "./Book";
   
   export default function Content(books) {
     return `
       <div id="content">
         ${Book(books[0])}
         ${Book(books[1])}
         ${Book(books[2])}
       </div>
     `;
   }

   Let's refactor this to use .map and .join, e.g.:

   import Book from "./Book";
   
   function mapBooks(books) {
     return books.map(book => Book(book)).join("");
   }
   
   export default function Content(books) {
     return `
       <div id="content">
         ${mapBooks(books)}
       </div>
     `;
   }

   Now we can have an unlimited number of books, just like our favorite big-box bookstores!

4. We can do the same thing with the sellingPoints Array in our Book component. HINT:

   function mapSellingPoints(sellingPoints) {
     return sellingPoints.map(point => `<li>${point}</li>`).join("");
   }
   
   export default function Book(book) {
     return `
       <div>
         <h1>${book.name}</h1>
         <h2>${book.author}</h2>
         <h3>${book.price}</h3>
         <ol>
           ${mapSellingPoints(book.sellingPoints)}
         </ol>
         <img src="${book.pictureUrl}">
       </div>
     `;
   }

5. Now that we're a bit more comfortable with Array superpowers like .forEach, .map, and .join, we can introduce a String superpower called .split(). This function can be called on any String to "split" that String into an Array of smaller strings. Let's turn our users' sellingPoints into a comma-separated Array of sellingPoints on form submit. That would be something like:

   // other form submit event stuff here
   
   sellingPoints: data[4].value.split(",");
   
   // even more form submit stuff here

6. Our last iteration of the form submit event handler was a bit repetetive. How can it be refactored to make our newProduct construction a bit more DRY? HINT:

   document
     .querySelector('form')
     .addEventListener(
       'submit',
       (event) => {
         const newProduct = event
           .target
           .elements
           .reduce(
             (acc, product) => {
               if(product.name === 'sellingPoints'){
                 acc.sellingPoints = product.value.split(',');
               }
               else {
                 acc[product.name] = product.value;
               }
   
               return acc;
             }
             {},
           )
         }
   
         books.push(newProduct);
   
         render(books);
       );

Now, that is a fancy event handler. Make sure you understand it before we get much farther in this Hack-A-Thon!

1. This is a lot of work for three books. What's the advantage to doing all of this work in JavaScript? While we could argue about the quality of the developer experience in JavaScript-land vs HTML-land, one thing is certain: if we want to use external data instead of hard-coded book Objects, we need to use JavaScript. More specifically, we need to use AJAX.

We've set up an API to query at https://api.savvycoders.com/books that will return an Array of book Objects structured identically to the ones we've been hard-coding up to this point. See if you can render the bookstore with data from this API. HINT:

axios // don't forget to npm install this!
  .get("https://api.savvycoders.com/books")
  .then(response => render(response.data));

1. This all works great for just books, but what if we wanted to add music to our store? We'll need another refactor! How could we re-organize our product data to account for the differences between types of products? Let's try adding our books Array to a new products Object that includes books and albums Arrays. HINT:

   const products = {
     books: [book1, book2],
     albums: [album1, album2] // albums should be identical to book objects
   };

2. You'll be happy to see that there is an /albums route in our Savvy Coders API, too. But how do we render both books and albums on initial page load? We could delay rendering anything until we get both books and albums, but that doesn't make things better for our users. We could also delay rendering all products until we have both books and albums, but that also delays our time-to-first-meaningful-interaction, irritating users. What if we rendered whatever came back first from our API, then re-render whenever the second batch comes in? Then we can use our products Object as a state store and do the following:

   const products = {
    books: [],
    albums: []
   };
   
   axios.get("https://api.savvycoders.com/books").then(response => {
    response.data.forEach(book => products.books.push(book));
   
    render(products);
   });
   
   axios.get("https://api.savvycoders.com/albums").then(response => {
    response.data.forEach(album => products.albums.push(album));
   
    render(products);
   });
   
   render(products); // this should be the first render

   You should also need to modify the Content

3. If everything went as planned, you should have a variety of different products rendered on the page! But now our form is broken again... we'll push every product to the books Array, which wouldn't make much sense. Let's add an input of type radio to let users choose between types of book or album, then modify our form's submit event handler to account for the new field. It should be a one-line change! HINT:

   // form submit event stuff
   
   // notice the String interpolation!
   product[`${newProduct.type}s`].push(newProduct);
   
   // even more form submit event stuff

4. Now let's let users filter between Books and Albums when they click on the books and albums links in the Navigation component. What might that look like? HINT:

   const links = document.querySelectorAll("#navigation a");
   
   links[0].addEventListener("click", event => {
    const filteredProducts = {
      // why do we need to do this?
      books: products.books,
      albums: []
    };
   
    event.preventDefault();
   
    render(filteredProducts);
   });
   
   links[1].addEventListener("click", event => {
    const filteredProducts = {
      books: [],
      albums: products.albums
    };
   
    event.preventDefault();
   
    render(filteredProducts);
   });

5. Now our bookstore has quite a few features! It's missing one last thing (besides, you know, a checkout system, or a business plan): notice that new books that we add don't yet persist beyond page refreshes. We can still pull down data from our API, but that data doesn't reflect any of the work that we've done so far! Let's fix that with a POST request to our API in the form's event handler. What does this do?

   // form submit stuff here
   
   const pluralizedType = `${newProduct.type}s`;
   
   products[pluralizedType].push(newProduct);
   
   axios.post(`https://api.savvycoders.com/${pluralizedType}`,    newProduct);
   
   // more form submit stuff here

Once this is done, we should be able to persist our product data between page refreshes. Go team!

1. In the time remaining (or as extra credit on your own), see if you can implement some of the following features:

   • Can you filter products by title using a Search input and a keyup event listener?

   • Can you delete books from the front end on click?

   • Can you delete books from the back-end database using a DELETE request (e.g. axios.delete)?

   • Can you add the ability to edit books on the front end?

   • Can you persist book edits to the API using a PATCH request (e.g. axios.patch)?

   • Can you add loading indicators using Font Awesome spinners and fa-spin?