 Courses from Xiaoru Li

Prisma is a next-generation open-source ORM For Node.js and TypeScript that helps developers build faster and make fewer errors.

It supports the following databases: PostgreSQL, MySQL, MariaDB, SQL Server, SQLite, and more recently, MongoDB (Preview).

Prisma provides a complete toolkit:

- Prisma Client: Auto-generated and type-safe database client
- Prisma Migrate: Declarative data modeling and customizable migrations
- Prisma Studio: Modern UI to view and edit data


prisma

In this lesson, we will learn how to model data relationships with Prisma Schema. 

We will be using a social network as our example, create data models such as users, posts, likes, comments, and model the relations between them. After this lesson, you should be able to model common relations like *one-to-one* (1:1), *one-to-many* (1:n), *many-to-many* (n:m) with Prisma.

At the time of recording this lesson, *Prisma Migrate* is in an experimental state, so the extra flag `--experimental` is needed to perform the `save` and `up` commands.


Work with Models and Relations with Prisma Schema

Apart from creating entries, it's also very intuitive to read, update, or delete data from the database with Prisma Client.

In this lesson, we will explore the [Prisma Client API](https://www.prisma.io/docs/reference/tools-and-interfaces/prisma-client/crud) for `findMany`, `findOne`, `updateMany`, `deleteMany` and so on.

Notice that since all these methods are tailored to the schema that we defined earlier, VS Code is aware of what is valid and is able to prompt us with helpful autocomplete options, making it much easier to explore the Prisma Client API.

Perform basic database queries (CRUD) with Prisma Client

In this lesson, we will write a code snippet which creates a new entry in the database. We will import and use the Prisma Client that we previously generated by running the command `npx prisma generate` to perform this query. 

Thanks to type-safety, we can now directly catch mismatched data field types while we are coding, drastically reducing the chance of having bugs in the code.

Tip - When in doubt, you can always use the key combination `ctrl-space` to invoke the autocomplete feature of VS Code. This is also a huge benefit made possible by Prisma's type-safety, and is super handy for exploring the Prisma Client API.

Create an entry in the database with Prisma Client

(This collection is still WIP)

Databases are essential for any full-stack applications, but working with them is traditionally very difficult. Prisma is here to change that. It's a powerful database toolkit that helps us think in data itself - not SQL, not classes, just the data we care about in our apps.

In this series, we will learn how to leverage the power of Prisma to automatically generate a type-safe, autocomplete-ready, and efficient query builder, all based on a simple and easy-to-read schema. We will integrate all this good stuff into a Next.js project to complete a simple social network app.

In the end, you will be able to understand how Prisma works, and confidently start using Prisma in your own project.

Build a full-stack app with Prisma

Prisma makes database access easy with an auto-generated and type-safe query builder.

In this lesson, we will learn how to install all the necessary dependencies and set up Prisma for an existing npm project, with an empty PostgreSQL database running in the background. We will create our first Prisma data model in the schema, and use *Prisma Migrate* to map our data model into the database. 

Finally, we'll generate the *Prisma Client* into our `node_modules` directory, so later we can simply import and use the client tailored to our data models as a normal npm package in the project.

At the time of recording this lesson, *Prisma Migrate* is in an experimental state, so the extra flag `--experimental` is needed to perform the `save` and `up` commands.

Install and Set up Prisma for a New Project

PostgreSQL is a powerful, open source object-relational database system.

postgres

When we need to spin up a database instance for our new project, installing the database management system directly on our local machine is almost always a bad idea. Luckily, Docker is here to help us practically reduce the complexity of dealing with "missing dependencies" and weird error messages down to zero.

In this lesson, we will learn how to get a PostgreSQL instance running locally with Docker Compose, so we can work on the database integration of our project and test things out with ease. To follow this lesson, you will need to have Docker pre-installed.

Set up and run a PostgreSQL instance locally with Docker Compose

Next.js is a minimalistic framework for server-rendered React applications.

Deploy a project on Vercel (formerly ZEIT) from a GitHub repository

With the Auth0 set up in our Next.js project, the next step is to integrate the authentication flow into our app.

In this lesson, we'll set up the API routes Auth0 needs to handle the auth process - `/api/login`, `/api/logout` and `/api/callback`. Then, we'll use the `getServerSideProps` lifecycle method in Next.js to authenticate users on the server-side. Finally, we'll update our `/secret` page component to have different states depending on the login session status of a visitor.

After this lesson, you will understand how to implement the user authentication logic in a Next.js app with Auth0.

Implement user Authentication in a Next.js app with Auth0

React is one of the web’s most popular frameworks for building JavaScript applications. 

If you know what you’re doing, React can drastically simplify how you build, use, and maintain code.

Whether you’re a React newbie or you’re ready for advanced techniques, you can level-up with egghead. Explore our in-depth courses, lessons, and community resources to build more powerful applications and crack open your career.

react

Auth0 is a great service for adding an authentication layer in our Next.js project, so we don't need to worry about security ourselves. Best of all, their free plan allows us to have 7000 active users with unlimited logins, sufficient for a vast majority of projects.

In this lesson, we'll set up Auth0 so that we can secure a `/secret` page in the next video. We'll learn how to create a new Auth0 tenant for our Next.js app, and how to properly set up the environment variables with both `.env` and `next.config.js` files, to make sure our Auth0 client secret is stored safely, and how to initialize Auth0 in our project with the `@auth0/nextjs-auth0` node module.

During the setup process, we'll also learn how to conditionally set environment variables using the `PHASE` constants of Next.js so that we can have different values for `development` or `production` modes (e.g. `localhost:3000` vs. `example.org`). As a bonus, we'll see how we can generate a random password with OpenSSL locally in the terminal as well.

Set up Auth0 in a Next.js app for user Authentication

The Static Site Generation (SSG) feature introduced in Next.js 9.3 is powerful, but sometimes we still need Server-Side Rendering (SSR) for dynamic contents on the fly. For this purpose, the new life-cycle method `getServerSideProps` allows us to pre-render a page whose data must be fetched at request time. This is, in many cases, much more preferable over the classic hybrid approach of `getInitialProps`, because we can separate code intended for servers or clients more clearly.

In this lesson, we will learn how to use `getServerSideProps` to dynamically fetch data and server-side render pages by consuming a "user profile" API route in our project. We will also learn how to return a 404 error page when the user profile doesn't exist.

After this lesson, you will be able to combine prior knowledge of writing API routes with what we've just learned to build a fully dynamic full-stack app with Next.js.

Fetch data from an API on the server-side with `getServerSideProps` in Next.js

The companion life-cycle method `getStaticPaths` of `getStaticProps` lets us use the data we have at build-time to specify which dynamic routes (like `/pages/blog/[slug]`) we want to generate statically.

In this lesson, we will learn how these two functions can be used in conjunction with each other to fetch mock blog data from the file system, then generate static HTML files for each blog post route. By the end of this lesson, you will be able to fully utilize the powerful Static Site Generation (SSG) feature of Next.js to build and optimize your next project.

Statically generate dynamic routes in Next.js with `getStaticPaths` and `getStaticProps`

Since version 9.3, Next.js added a new life-cycle method `getStaticProps` for improved Static Site Generation (SSG) support, allowing us to fetch data and create static pages at build time. Together with the new data fetching method `getServerSideProps` used for Server-Side Rendering (SSR), Next.js allows us to clearly separate code intended for SSG or SSR. This is, in many cases, much better than the classic hybrid approach of `getInitialProps`.

In this lesson, we will import a JSON file from the file system in the `getStaticProps` life-cycle method of a Table of Contents page, so that we can render links based on the content we have, and statically generate the page at build time. At the end of this lesson, we will export our app using the `next export` command to a fully static website.

After this lesson, you will be able to optimize pages that don't need to be updated often on every request by only pre-generating them at build-time, utilizing the new SSG feature.

Static Site Generation (SSG) in Next.js with `getStaticProps`

Miscellaneous one-off lessons on debugging, productivity hacks, and JavaScript tricks.

JavaScript® (often shortened to JS) is a lightweight, interpreted, object-oriented language with first-class functions, most known as the scripting language for Web pages, but used in many non-browser environments as well such as node.js or Apache CouchDB. It is a prototype-based, multi-paradigm scripting language that is dynamic, and supports object-oriented, imperative, and functional programming styles.

javascript

Tips and Tricks

The cool thing about Next.js API routes is that we can directly consume the API endpoints from pages.

SWR is a nice tool for handling data loading state in React apps using hooks, and is a perfect companion for our Next.js application. In this lesson, we will learn how to use [SWR](https://swr.now.sh/) - a data fetching library by Zeit - to consume API endpoints on the client-side, and conditionally render an error or a loading component when the data is not available.

Consume Next.js API routes with the SWR library on the client-side

The "API routes" in Next.js are Node.js serverless functions that we can easily incorporate into our app.

In this lesson, we will learn how to write API request handlers, and how to set up dynamic API routes. After this lesson, you'll be able to create simple API endpoints with Next.js ready to be used both in our frontend code within Next.js itself or for other general purposes.

Build straightforward API with Next.js API routes

In this lesson, we will learn how to set up and use Chakra UI with Next.js.

We'll use Chakra UI to customize the way Next.js styles every page in our application by defining a `_app.tsx` file. We'll wrap our app in the `ThemeProvider` that Chakra gives us as well as use `CSSReset` to reset the default browser styling.

After this initial set up, you'll see how easy it is to start styling pages with Chakra by using components like `Heading`, `Link`, and `Flex` exposed from the core package.

Set up Chakra UI to work with Next.js

Next.js uses a file-system based router, meaning that it treats single-file components in the `/pages/` directory as pages. In this lesson, we will set up multiple pages and use `next/link` to navigate across different routes, and see how to create dynamic routes, and parse URL query strings.

We will be using TypeScript, but for this specific lesson, no changes need to be made if you are using JavaScript.

Understand static and dynamic Page Routing in Next.js

[Next.js](https://nextjs.org/) is a fantastic framework that allows us to build performant server-side rendered React apps with ease.

In this series, we will learn how to utilize the powerful features of Next.js 9, like API routes and Static Site Generation (SSG), to build full-stack React apps. We will use [Auth0](https://auth0.com) to handle user authentication and authorization, and we'll also learn how to integrate the excellent [Chakra UI](https://chakra-ui.com/) component library into our Next.js project to make it a breeze to build beautiful and modularized user interfaces. Finally, we will import and deploy our project from GitHub to [Vercel](https://vercel.com), the deployment platform built by the creators of Next.js.

This collection will still be continuously updated with new and more advanced content. Subscribe to the RSS feed to get notified of the latest lessons!

Introduction to Next.js 9

Next.js treats single-file components in the `/pages/` directory as pages, so we need to work around this abstraction to access and modify the `<head>` element of the page. In this lesson, we will learn how to render the `<head>` element dynamically with a constantly updated title in Next.js 9, and see how this feature can be helpful for loading custom fonts.

Render the <head /> element dynamically in Next.js

In this lesson, we will learn how to initialize a Next.js 9 project with TypeScript support from scratch.

Initialize a Next.js 9 project with TypeScript

Visual Studio Code is an integrated development environment (IDE) built and maintained by Microsoft. It is offered free of charge.

vscode

In this lesson, we will learn how to use custom ENV variables to customize the PS1 Bash/Zsh command prompt in the VS Code terminal, without affecting our custom terminal themes in other applications. We will see how this can be useful for keeping the terminal clean for screen recordings.

I'm using Zsh in this video, but this works in Bash with `~/.bashrc` as well.

Customize the PS1 Bash/Zsh Command Prompt in VS Code with Environment Variables

When comparing two visually similar websites, it can often be challenging to precisely identify the subtle differences between them. To facilitate a rapid analysis of these discrepancies, a practical technique involves leveraging Chrome's integrated developer tools to capture full-page screenshots of each site. Subsequently, these screenshots can be uploaded to a platform like AI Studio. There, the AI can analyze the images and generate a report detailing the variations. This entire process, leveraging a few quick shortcuts, can be completed in under a minute, delivering a comprehensive breakdown of the differences for efficient comparison and analysis.

Quickly Compare Two Sites Using AI Studio with Chrome Full Page Screenshots

It's fairly trivial to create a React project, but there's always a big hurdle between creating it locally and making it shareable so that someone else can run it. This lesson walks you through the process of automating creating a React project locally, creating the repository where it's going to be hosted, and creating shareable links where it can be run so that you can quickly and easily create single one-off demos and shoot them over to your friends and coworkers for sharing your code ideas in a working environment.


```bash
share-react-project() {
  if [[ -z "$1" ]]; then
    echo "Usage: share-react-project <project_name>"
    return 1
  fi

  local project_name="$1"
  local github_username=$(gh api /user --jq '.login')

  echo "Creating Vite project: $project_name"
  pnpm create vite "$project_name" --template react

  cd "$project_name"

  echo "Initializing Git repository"
  git init

  echo "Adding all files to Git"
  git add .

  echo "Creating initial commit"
  git commit -m "Initial commit"

  local codesandbox_link="https://codesandbox.io/p/github/${github_username}/${project_name}"

  echo "Adding CodeSandbox link to README.md"
  echo "" >> README.md
  echo "## CodeSandbox" >> README.md
  echo "[![Open in CodeSandbox](https://assets.codesandbox.io/github/button-edit-blue.svg)](${codesandbox_link})" >> README.md

  echo "Adding README.md to Git"
  git add README.md

  echo "Committing README.md changes"
  git commit -m "Add CodeSandbox link"

  echo "Creating GitHub repository: $github_username/$project_name"
  gh repo create "$github_username/$project_name" --public

  echo "Pushing to remote 'origin'"
  git push -u origin main

  echo "Project '$project_name' created successfully!"
  echo "GitHub repository: https://github.com/$github_username/$project_name"
  echo "CodeSandbox link: $codesandbox_link"
}
```

Automate Creating a Local React Project, GitHub Repository, and Live Hosted Demo in a Single Command

[Verdaccio](https://verdaccio.org/) is a fully featured NPM registry that you can run locally on your machine. It’s a great tool for testing your release process, running end-to-end tests, and simulating real-world scenarios like deploying packages, installing them, and verifying functionality as an end user would.

Nx includes a [generator](https://nx.dev/features/generate-code) that simplifies setting up Verdaccio. To configure it, run:

```shell
npx nx g @nx/js:setup-verdaccio   
```

This command installs the necessary NPM packages and creates a `project.json` file with a `local-registry` target. To start the local registry, open a new terminal window and run:

```shell
npx nx local-registry
```

This will:
- Launch the Verdaccio registry.
- Configure NPM to point to the local Verdaccio server at `http://localhost:4873`.

> **Note:** A `project.json` file provides an advanced way to define scripts, offering more flexibility than a traditional `package.json` for managing complex targets.

Setup local Verdaccio server to release NPM packages

Learn how to spin up a local NPM registry powered by Verdaccio to test deploy your NPM packages.

In TypeScript, developers often begin by defining the structure of their data using type definitions or interfaces, which is a powerful way to ensure type safety. However, as applications grow and become more complex, simply defining the shape of an object might not be enough to guarantee its consistent creation and behavior throughout the codebase. This often leads to situations where objects that are intended to be of a certain "type" might be missing crucial properties or have incorrect data, which can be difficult to track down and debug.

This lesson tackles the question of when and why to move beyond basic type definitions and embrace classes in TypeScript. It demonstrates how classes provide a more robust mechanism for defining object structure, enforcing type constraints, and ensuring consistent object creation. By establishing a clear blueprint for objects, classes not only improve compile-time type safety but also offer runtime benefits and better code organization, ultimately helping developers avoid common pitfalls associated with loosely structured objects in larger TypeScript projects.

Stop Avoiding Classes in TypeScript

Karabiner isn't only for your keyboard. It can also hijack your mouse buttons and enable them to be similar to layers on your keyboard, where holding down a mouse button can allow you to tap keys on your keyboard to trigger commands and macros that can completely revolutionize your workflows. For example, you can hold down the right mouse button and tap on R to go to references in VS Code. Or hold down the right mouse button and tap the left mouse button to chop up videos and Screenflow.

This completely unlocks a whole new world of possibilities and use cases for your mouse as you can hover your mouse over anywhere on the page. And just tapping keys on your keyboard allows you to trigger mouse actions, to trigger keyboard actions, or to trigger macros and applications and terminal commands. and anything that your imagination can come up with. 

Karabiner: Rethinking Right-Click as a Macro Command Center

Make an HTML table more readable on mobile devices by using the ::before pseudo-element. We add labels to each cell, so they appear like cards when the table is viewed on smaller screens. The ::before content is set using a data-label attribute for each cell to enhance mobile viewability without horizontal scrolling.



Create a mobile friendly table with the before pseudo-element

Learn to use CSS ::before pseudo-element for mobile-friendly HTML tables. Add labels to cells for enhanced readability on mobile, avoiding horizontal scroll.

Any app of a decent size has event flows and messages being passed around. At a certain point it becomes complicated to explain it through prose and you want to turn towards diagrams. Now setting aside the time to create diagrams that accurately describe what's happening in your codebase can be quite time consuming. Luckily, with today's AI tools, we can now just do basic walkthroughs with rough recordings over codebase dictating what's going on along the way and then upload that to tools like AI Studio and then ask it to generate diagrams in a text-based format such as Mermaid that will then generate the flowcharts and diagrams for us. So this video walks us through this process of recording a rough video, uploading it to AI Studio and then asking AI Studio to generate the proper Mermaid diagram syntax.

Generate Mermaid Flow Chart Diagrams with Gemini 2.0 from Rough Screen Recordings

I'm a diehard Karabiner user and anytime I start doing something repetitively I always move it into my Karabiner configuration. Sometimes I'll fall into scenarios where I want to trigger a command, but I also want to know if that command succeeded or failed. Since Karabiner can trigger any command, setting up the command is fairly straightforward, but knowing whether it succeeded or failed became much more difficult. Luckily for me there is a package called terminal-notifier that you can install from homebrew and you can pipe the output of your command to terminal-notifier. And have a seamless way of triggering your keyboard shortcut which runs a command and you can be notified of the results.

Use Karabiner to Trigger a Terminal Command and Get Notified of the Results

There are a lot of scenarios when inspecting a site in Chrome where you don't want any click events to fire and you don't want any scripts to run. Or maybe something is animating in and out of the page and you want to capture it at a certain moment. This is a great use case for pausing script execution, which is kind of using the debugger manually by going into the Chrome DevTools and the Sources tab and clicking the pause button to essentially pause the entire page. This will give you a chance to inspect any of the elements and styles you want to inspect. And you don't have to worry about fire and click events or anything that might interrupt your investigation into the elements and styles that you want to find.

Pause Script Execution in Chrome to Easily Inspect Elements

Gemini 2.0 has a context window of a million tokens, and this means that you can upload hundreds of files and allow it to inspect and analyze massive refactors across entire code bases. 

This lesson demonstrates concatenating an entire code base into a single file and then uploading it to AI Studio. Once within AI Studio, we ask it to find the types of tasks that it can evaluate for us. Then we select one of the tasks and ask it to generate instructions for that task. Once those instructions are complete, we then turn them over to Windsurf's Cascade agent, and we allow Windsurf's Cascade to do all of the work for us as we sit back, relax, and let the AI do our jobs.

Xiaoru Li

Search Results