Frontend Exercise

Note: this repo is intended for Hack4Impact UIUC members. If you are interested in learning from this exercise, please use this repo instead!

This exercise is intended for you to get familiar with fundamental React concepts in an interactive way, as well as for you to get comfortable developing in a modern Node.js environment.

This project will be broken down into multiple parts. Each part will cover a fundamental React/frontend concept. After you finish this project, submit a pull request and assign your tech lead to review it!

This exercise is due before the next all hands meeting (Sunday Feb 18th). However, the sooner you put up your PR, the sooner you will get a review, and the faster you will get feedback and learn!

Guidance

We understand that a lot of you are new to React and frontend development in general. We think going through this exercise will really help you get up to speed in order to start being productive contributing to your nonprofit project.

The Beginner's Guide to React will be very beneficial to go through to get a complete understanding on React fundamentals. We also want you to get comfortable diving into React Docs and Javascript Docs as part of this exercise.

A lot of what makes a good software developer is being resourceful and knowing where/how to find information you need. At the same time, the entire Hack4Impact community is available if you get stuck, have unanswered questions, or want to discuss anything!

Ask questions and discuss about javascript as a language and its features or syntax in the #javascript Slack channel.

Ask questions and discuss about React, styling, or any other frontend related topics in the #frontend Slack channel.

And of course, if you are already familiar with this or have figured it out, please hop in these channels and help those who need it! :)

Requirements

node version 8.x
npm version 5.x

Install node and npm here.

Check if you have the correct versions by running the following commands in your terminal:

node -v

npm -v

Setup

Install the React Devtools to easily debug and see what's going on in your React app.

If you're using Sublime Text as your editor, you might want to install the Babel plugin to get proper syntax highlighting for JSX syntax.

Open up your terminal and navigate to the directory you want this project in. Then clone this repository by running:

git clone https://github.com/hack4impact-uiuc/frontend-exercise.git

Go into the newly cloned directory:

cd frontend-exercise

Install project dependencies:

npm install

After that's done, run this to start development:

npm start

This will start running the app and automatically open it at http://localhost:3000. Anytime you change and save the code, it will automatically reload! This will remain a running process in your terminal, so you will need to open a new tab or window to execute other commands.

Before you make any changes to the code, make sure to create a new branch. Typically branches are named based on the feature or bugfix being addressed, but for this project, name your branch with your own name so your reviewer can easily follow:

git checkout -b <YOUR_NAME>

Branch names should be all lowercase and can't contain spaces. Instead of spaces, use hyphens. For example:

git checkout -b varun-munjeti

Optional Setup

Prettier is a tool that automatically reformats your code to follow a certain set of coding style guidelines. It is configured to run automatically before each commit. This makes sure all of our code follows the same code styles, enforcing good practices and minimizing conflicts.

It is definitely not necessary for this exercise, but there are prettier plugins you can install for your editor. See instructions here.

Part 1

Goal: Get familiar with JSX syntax, component structure, and passing props

Tasks:

Send a shouldDisplayImage prop into the Instructions component that determines whether or not to display the H4I logo (Hint)

Once you're done, make a commit to your branch with the message "Part 1 Complete." Do the same for each part so your tech lead can follow your process for each step.

Part 2

Goal: Get familiar with rendering lists and javascript array functions

Tasks:

Send an items prop into the Instructions component which contains a list of strings
Display a bullet point list of all the items
Remove all items that are less than 3 characters long
Make every other list item uppercase
Do this without using for or while loops
Very useful videos to watch:
Functional Programming Intro - just the first two videos are enough, although there's a lot to learn from the rest of the playlist and his other videos! (highly recommend subscribing)
Rendering lists in React

Part 3

Goal: Get familiar with component state

Tasks:

Create a new Counter component
Set its initial state of count to 0
Display the value of the current count
Create two buttons, one that increments the count and one that decrements it. Hint

Part 4

Goal: Get familiar with user input

Tasks:

In App.js, make an input and a submit button that sets an initialCount state
Validate the user input to make sure it's valid (is a number)
Pass the initialCount state as a prop into the Counter component, and use this value as the initial count in the Counter. Make sure to watch out for types when doing this, since user input is a String and we want to send in a Number.
Bonus: show UI feedback if user input is invalid (a simple message will do)
Note: If your button refreshes the page, throw in a button type: <button type="button" ...

Part 5

Goal: Understand state/props communication between sibling components

Tasks:

Move the input and submit button into its own component called InitialCountForm that is a child of the App component
Maintain that the functionality of being able to set the initial count of the counter works
Useful: React Component Lifecycle, specifically componentWillReceiveProps. Tangentially relevant: React Cheat Sheet

Note: You can consider the project complete enough to submit a PR after this part. Part 6 is mostly for you to get creative :)

Part 6

Goal: Get familiar with CSS/SCSS and styling

Tasks: Nothing specific, play around with styling!

Note: You can create SCSS files, and they will be automatically compiled to CSS files when you save, but you need to import the CSS file into your component.

Some styling related resources:

Submitting

When you're done with all the steps, open a pull request (PR) and assign your tech lead to review it!

Before you can submit a PR, you'll have to push your branch to a remote branch (the one that's on GitHub, not local).

Check to see that you're on your branch:

git branch

If you want to make sure all of your commits are in:

git log

Press Q to quit the git log screen.

Push your commits to your remote branch:

git push

The first time you do this, you might get an error since your remote branch doesn't exist yet. Usually it will tell you the correct command to use:

git push --set-upstream origin <YOUR_BRANCH_NAME>

Note: this only needs to be done the first time you push a new branch. You can use just git push afterwards.

Follow the instructions on the wiki to open the PR.

Note: make sure that you don't actually merge your PR in! We are only using it as a mechanism for providing code reviews.

Resources

MDN - A reintroduction to Javascript
The Beginner's Guide to React
React Docs
Airbnb's Javascript Style Guide
Airbnb's React Style Guide
Airbnb's CSS Style Guide

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