Getting React-ive
Tags: react, redux, student
Published: 2020-03-15 22:19:58

For my capstone project with Flatiron School's software engineering program, I was tasked with developing a React/Redux application. The concept for my project was to design an easy-to-use digital flight logbook for pilots, titled ECHO. It’s important to maintain a backup flight log in order to calculate hours and confirm endorsements if a physical logbook is ever lost or destroyed. The benefit of a digital logbook is the ability to store years of flight information in one, centralized location, rather than combing through dozens of material logbooks.

The basic user experience entails securely signing up and logging in, browsing an index of existing flights with basic information, selecting a specific flight to view detailed information, and adding new flights to the logbook. 

#### Step 1: rails new --api
A Rails API backend handles data persistence within the app. I utilized the following workflow to implement a simple Rails backend. 

First and foremost, I took care of the basics - Activating CORS and updating the API port to 3001 (leaving port 3000 available for NPM). Next, I jumped in to creating my fundamental resources, in this case generating users and flights. 

Upon generating my resources, I immediately implemented api/v1 namespacing for best practice, in case future updates are applied. Next, I got to work defining model relationships (user has_many flights, flights belong_to users) and adding validations. 

I then considered how I would like to serialize the data and chose to incorporate the `fast_jsonapi gem`. Using this gem, I added serializers for the user and flight resources. Finally, I thought about which controller actions would be required for each resource. I added basic index, show, and create actions to the users controller. I included all of the CRUD actions to the flights controller. Then, I created some simple seed data and was ready to migrate the database and test the API.

#### Step 2: create-react-app
Per the requirements for this project, I used `create-react-app` to generate the client side of my project. This allowed me to quickly start building out the frontend of my single-page application. This generator provides the essential structure and tools needed to jump right in to designing a React application. 

#### Step 3: react-redux & redux (redux-thunk, too!)
React and Redux work together to render and store data on the frontend of the app. I followed these next steps to build out the client side.

I started by configuring the Redux store and wrapping the base App component with the store Provider, as well as react-router-dom’s BrowserRouter. BrowserRouter allows for declarative RESTful routing without page refresh. With these in place, I was able to begin developing the Redux store. Utilizing `redux-thunk` action creators, I built the critical user actions and user reducer to simply store all users. I implemented a root reducer to manage combined reducers, and added the user reducer here. 

After using DevTools to check that users were now in my store, I built a basic home page component to be rendered from App. Next, I dove into developing login functionality. I incorporated the `bcrypt gem` along with sessions to the backend to securely manage user passwords. On the frontend, I built a login component and made the decision to manage the form’s state through the Redux store, rather than in local state. The final piece of the puzzle was creating the actions and the reducers to handle creating and setting the user properly, along with updating and resetting the login form’s state. Next, I added in a comparatively simple logout component with the associated actions and reducer to clear the user’s session. With everything in place for login, I was able to reuse a good deal of this functionality to devise a sign up component.

With user login, logout, and signup in order, I then moved on to implementing the flight form and log. I began by developing a flight log container that would render flight index cards on the user’s main account page. I built a flight card component to render basic flight details and then got to work on the larger form component. I incorporated two containers for the form, one for new flights and the other to edit an existing flight. For flight actions, I first built out the form’s simple actions and reducer to update, reset, and set the edit values for the form. As with login, flight form data would be managed in the Redux store rather than locally. Then it was time to tackle adding all CRUD actions for flights, including setting the current user’s flights.

As expected, the vast majority of time and troubleshooting for this project was spent on step 3. I found the biggest challenge to be deciding to go with a specific design pattern, only to realize I should redesign in a more efficient manner. This was the source of the biggest headaches as well as the most rewarding “aha!” moments on this project. 

#### Step 4: react-router
Time to circle back to `react-router-dom`’s BrowserRouter. This functionality was actually integrated in tandem with each piece of step 3, but deserves a quick, special aside. In order to use RESTful navigation on a single-page app without refresh, the main App component must use BrowserRouter. This enables us to declare custom routes which render an associated component, allowing for useful, descriptive URLs based on the current content. For example, visiting “/login” renders the login component, or typing in “/flights/:id/edit” shows a specific flight’s edit page. This makes traversing the application more user-friendly and predictable.

#### Final Thoughts
Developing ECHO was a wonderful learning experience and truly helped me to gain a deeper understanding of React and Redux. If anything, my biggest takeaway is that there are a thousand different ways to accomplish something, especially in programming. However with each new problem, some of those approaches will whittle away and the opportunity to learn and enhance your processes and patterns will emerge - the goal is to stay receptive and react-ive to those opportunities.