Redux Friends

Topics:

• React Router
• axios package
• AJAX
• Promises
• Middleware
• redux-thunk package
• Authentication tokens
• optional: redux-logger package

Project Description

• Last week we built an app that interfaced with a RESTful API. That same project is now to be built using React & Redux.

• Take your examples from the mini project and use them to build a more sophisticated Application. Have fun!

• Once your server is up and running, the URL you'll be able to hit from within your action creators is http://localhost:5000. You will however need an authentication header on all the calls except the login call.

• Take a look at the endpoints that our API has to offer in server.js.

  • [POST] * to /api/login: returns a token to be added to the header of all other requests. Pass in the following credentials as the body of the request: { username: 'Lambda School', password: 'i<3Lambd4' }
  • [GET] to /api/friends: returns the list of friends.
  • [GET] to /api/friends/123: returns the friend with the id passed as part of the URL (123 in example).
  • [POST] to /api/friends: creates a friend and return the new list of friends. Pass the friend as the body of the request (the second argument passed to axios.post).
  • [PUT] to /api/friends/:id: updates the friend using the id passed as part of the URL. Send the an object with the updated information as the body of the request (the second argument passed to axios.put).
  • [DELETE] to /api/friends/123: removes the friend using the id passed as part of the URL (123 in example).

Initialize Project

• Run yarn or npm i inside the root directory of this project to install dependencies.
• Run yarn start or npm start to start the API server.
• Run create-react-app friends in a separate terminal window in the root directory of the project to create your starter application.
• cd into the friends folder and type yarn add redux react-redux redux-thunk redux-logger axios react-router-dom which will install the needed dependencies.
• To start out, create a reducer that will be passed as the rootReducer to createStore. Start with a pretty simple initialState object that has a friends property set as an empty array. Your state tree will grow pretty large as you build out more and more actions.
• Don't forget to hook up the store using the Provider tag inside of src/index.js, passing it your root reducer.
• You will need to use redux-thunk as a middleware inside of src/index.js. You'll want to be sure to pass it to applyMiddleware() then feed it into your createStore function.
• If you so choose, include redux-logger to your middleware. You're going to have plenty of action creators that will consume our API so you'll get plenty of actions triggered.

Build the App!

• Add a route for a login page and build out a simple login form with username and password inputs and a submit button (design this however you would like).
• The login action creator should dispatch a "logging in" action, return the promise created by axios.post, then save the returned token to localStorage. You can connect your Login component, and show a spinner on your form or in your button while the login request is happening.
• When the request returns, use the history object in your Login component to navigate your user to your FriendsList route
• Create a <PrivateRoute /> component to protect your other routes. It should check localStorage for a token, and redirect the user to your login route if there is not a token.
• Create a protected route for your friends list. Remember, if the user isn't logged in, navigating to this protected route will redirect them to the login page.
• In your FriendsList component, rendered with <ProtectedRoute />, you will create a list of your friends that you get from the API using React and Redux.

Root Reducer and our State Tree

• Your initial state could (but doesn't have to) look something like this:

{
  deletingFriend: false,
  fetchingFriends: false,
  friends: [],
  loggingIn: false,
  savingFriends: false,
  updatingFriend: false,
  error: null
}

• This is a pretty large state tree, but each field is extremely simple.
• All of your items in your state tree represent a make up of actions that you're going to make asynchronously. Think about your application and the state you need. This root reducer object will represent that state.
• Each friend item that is in the friends array should have the following format:

{
  id: 1
  name: 'Joe',
  age: 24,
  email: 'joe@lambdaschool.com',
}

Project

• If you'd like, you can create multiple "view" components for your routes and connect them all up to your redux state tree. You could have a component who's sole purpose is to render the login form; one for a form for updating a user; another component who's sole purpose is for creating users; and then another component who's sole purpose is to delete a user.
• It really is up to you how you build this project. I suggest writing down the flow you want to follow, and then writing down each individual piece you need for each step in the flow (ie step 3, build containers - import connect, write mapStateToProps function, import action creators and pass them to connect, etc. etc.) so that this process doesn't feel as overwhelming.

Stretch Problem

• In the requirements for this project, we implemented a login POST operation, a GET operation, and a "add friend" POST operation. Add two more actions, one for making a PUT request, and the other for making a DELETE request.
• Style the friends list and the input field and make everything look nice.
• Expand the number of properties that you put on each friend object. Feel free to remove the dummy data on the server or modify it in any way.