Learn Alpine, Angular-cli and Edge

Welcome to this beginner level series on Alpine JS! 👋🏞

Alpine JS is a rugged, minimal framework for composing JavaScript behaviour in your markup. It brings declarative, reactive, data-driven nature of libraries like React or Vue to your HTML templates.

In this series, you will learn about Alpine's handy **directives**. You'll discover how to define a component scope with `x-data`, run code on mount with `x-init`, attach event listeners with `x-on`, display data with `x-text`, decide wether or not to show an element with `x-show`, iterate through data with `x-for`, retrieve a DOM element with `x-ref`, learn how to achieve _two-way data binding_ with `x-model`, and much more.

You'll also learn how **"modifiers"** can be applied and chained to directives to provide additional functionality: control the animation transition of entering and leaving DOM elements, debounce an event listener, etc.

We'll also touch on what Alpine calls **"magic properties"**, which give you access to native browser events (`$event`), reference to DOM elements (`$refs`), and more.

You'll gradually discover Alpine's API and syntax, from building simple tabs to a mini app that fetches a dog picture based on a "breed" search field. 🐶

**Get ready to breathe some fresh air** - it's time to walk into cool, green Alpine pastures! 🏞

Alpine.js offers you the reactive and declarative nature of big frameworks like Vue or React at a much lower cost.

You get to keep your DOM, and sprinkle in behavior as you see fit.

alpine

Sprinkle declarative, reactive behaviour on your HTML with Alpine JS

In this lesson, we learn how the `x-init` directive in Alpine JS lets us run a JavaScript expression once the component has initiated.

We see the nuances that allow us to trigger that code before Alpine performs initial DOM updates, or after these updates have been made.

Focus in input field on page load with `x-init` in Alpine JS

In this lesson, we define a "count" state value with the `x-data` directive provided by Alpine JS. This defines a new scoped component, which can have access to this state.

We then display the "count" value in our HTML with the `x-text` directive, which updates an element's `innerText` value.

We also hook up buttons with click event listeners with `x-on:click`, which allows us to modify the count value as desired.

Update a count state value with the x-on event listener directive in Alpine JS

In this lesson, we create a set of tabs with Alpine JS, where only the content of the currently active tab is visible. To do this, we define an `activeTab` state value with `x-data. We then wire up our buttons to change the value of `activeTab` on click, and use `x-show` to determine if the tab content should be visible or not, based on the value of `activeTab`.

We also take control of the `class` attribute with `x-bind`, and we conditionally output an "active" class based on, you guessed it, the value of `activeTab`.

Toggle visibility and styles based on state with `x-show` and `x-bind` in Alpine JS

In this lesson, we move the component definition to a function, defined in a script tag in the HTML document.

We then iterate through an Array of Objects with the `x-for` directive in Alpine JS. We use a `<template>` tag to wrap the HTML element we want to repeat for each item, and put the `x-for` directive on that template tag.

We also define a "computed" property by adding a method on our function, which checks if a given ID matched the currently active tab id. This computed property allows us to determine wether or not to apply the "active" classname to our tab buttons.

Iterate through data with the `x-for` attribute in Alpine JS

In this lesson, we smoothen the transitions between tabs by applying a `transition` modifier to our `x-show` directive.

We see how we can ignore the leaving elements, and focus the animation on the entering elements. We tweak the transition duration and origin by chaining additional modifiers to our `x-show` directive.

Control enter and leave transitions with the `x-show.transition` modifier in Alpine JS

In this lesson, we see how the `x-model` directive makes achieving "two-way data binding" effortless in Alpine JS.

We see what it would take to recreate the same functionality with an `x-bind` directive for the input value, as well as an `@input` event listener which, thanks to an access to the browser's native events via the `$event` magic property, sets the state value to `$event.target.value`.

Keep a DOM input and state value in sync with the `x-model` directive in Alpine JS

In this lesson, we learn how to retrieve a DOM element via the `x-ref` directive in Alpine JS, which gives us a reference to the element it is applied on. In our case, an input field.

We can then use the `$refs` object, and reach for the ref we need to target.

This allows us to trigger the focus state of the input field, with the `.focus()` method.

Focus an input field on button click with `x-ref` and the `$refs` property in Alpine JS

In this lesson, we build a little app that fetches dog photos from the dog.ceo API, based on a "breed" search field. We want the API call to happen again when the search value changes, and to do so we use the `$watch` property from Alpine JS, which lets us define what state property we want to watch, and what callback function to run when a change happens.

We also use the `debounce` modifier on the `x-model` property to avoid firing an API call on each keystroke.

Refetch API data when a state value changes with the `$watch` property in Alpine JS

Welcome to this beginner level series on Alpine JS! 👋🏞

Alpine JS is a rugged, minimal framework for composing JavaScript behaviour in your markup. It brings declarative, reactive, data-driven nature of libraries like React or Vue to your HTML templates.

This is the series intro video. Let's get started!

Series Intro - Beginner Level Alpine JS

edge

Coding for accessibility? You should get familiar with the accessibility tree, a structure produced by platform Accessibility APIs running parallel to the DOM, which exposes accessibility information to assistive technologies such as screen readers. There are multiple tools for visualizing this tree; in this lesson we'll look at Chrome and Microsoft Edge. For more on Accessibility APIs, refer to this [amazing article by Leonie Watson](https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2015/03/web-accessibility-with-accessibility-api/). For a how-to on setting up the Chrome Accessibility Inspector, visit [bit.ly/chrome-a11y](http://bit.ly/chrome-a11y).

What is the Accessibility Tree?

angular-cli

Generating components with the Angular CLI allows for scaffolding applications quickly. Learn what will be generated for you and how to generate quickly with shortcuts in the desired directory.

Generate components with the Angular CLI

Angular is a development platform for creating applications using modern web standards. Angular includes a wealth of essential features such as mobile gestures, animations, filtering, routing, data binding, security, internationalization, and beautiful UI components. It's extremely modular, lightweight, and easy to learn.

angular

Getting started with angular development can be difficult, with a lot of moving parts. Allow the Angular CLI to handle those complexities so you can focus on creating great applications.

In this lesson you will learn how to install the Angular CLI from npm, create a new application, serve the new application in the browser and edit it with live-reload.

Install the Angular CLI to Create and Serve an Angular Application

In this lesson we will our `UiModule`, that has a `LayoutComponent`, `HeaderComponent` and `FooterComponent`. 

We generate `UiModule` by running the following command:
```
ng generate module ui --module app
```

This generates the new module and imports it in our `AppModule`.

We'll create the `LayoutComponent` using:
```
ng generate component ui/containers/layout
ng generate component ui/containers/header
ng generate component ui/containers/footer
``` 

We update our `AppRoutingModule` and add this component to our first route to make it visible. 

The `HeaderComponent` and `FooterComponent` are referenced in the LayoutComponent and we implement the actual templates!

Create Application Layout with Components in an Angular CLI Project

In this lesson we will add the `ProductModule`, where our actual application code will live.

```
ng g m product --routing
``` 

We will add 2 routes to `AppRoutingModule`,  the first is a redirect route that redirects any unhandled paths to `products`. The second route is the actual `products` route, that 'lazy-loads' the `ProductModule`.

We use the `ng` command to create the `ProductListComponent` and `ProductDetailComponent`, which are so called 'containers components'.

Container components are responsible for fetching data, handling routes and passing data into the 'presentational components' 

We will add 2 routes to `ProductRoutingModule`,  one to each of our new Container Components.

Lastly we will use  `ActivatedRoute` in `ProductDetailComponent` to fetch the `:id` from the route.

Create Container Components for Retrieving Data in an Angular CLI Project

In this lesson we will create the presentational components for the product list and detail pages. These components define how the data is displayed and are being referenced from the Container components.

The new components are `ProductsComponent` and `ProductComponent`.

After using `ng generate` to generate these components, we will update the `ProductListComponent` to invoke `ProductsComponent` and pass in our local `products` array.

In `ProductsComponent` we loop over each of the items we get from the `@Input() products` and pass each one into our `ProductComponent`.

The `ProductComponent` has 2 `Inputs()`, one for the `Product` and a `boolean` that toggles showing the product details. This is useful because don't want to show product details in the list view.

After the `ProductComponent` is implemented the last step is to reference it from the `ProductDetails` container component. 

Create Presentational Components for Displaying Data in an Angular CLI Project

In this lesson we will create the `ProductsService` that is responsible for the interaction with our API. 

We will inject the `HttpClient` that we get from `@angular/common/http`. To make this working we need to import `HttpClientModule` in our `AppModule`.

We define a `getProducts` and `getProduct` method so we can get a list of products and an single product which we will use in respectively the `ProductList` and `ProductDetail` components. 

In both components we will use the `ngOnInit` lifecycle hook to invoke the methods on the service, and retrieve the data by subscribing to it. 

[Link to product api used in lessons](https://github.com/beeman/egghead-products-api)

Create an Angular Service to Retrieve Data from an API 

In our 'container components' we use the `ngOnInit` lifecycle hook to subscribe to our service. While this works, there is a downside: the components get loaded before the data is available, which results in that we show empty components. This is particularly visible on slow connections.

To fix this we create a `ProductsResolver`, and implement the `resolve` method that fetches the data from the service. In `ProductRoutingModule` we add the `resolve` property to our route, and add make the `ProductsResolver` resolve and store the data in the `products` property.

Inside our `ngOnInit` in `ProductListComponent` we can now subscribe to the route data, which makes the usage of the service in this component obsolete.

We do the same for the `ProductDetailComponent`. After this there are no longer empty components, the router will not navigate after the data is retrieved.

Create Angular Resolvers to retrieve the product data from the Service

In this lesson we will install the latest version of Angular CLI and use the `ng new` command to scaffold out the application.

Scaffold a New Angular App using Angular CLI

In this lesson we will add Bootstrap to our project. This allows us to focus on building our app without having to spend too much time writing custom CSS.

We will use grab the URL too the Bootstrap CSS from [bootstrapcdn.com](https://www.bootstrapcdn.com/)  and add it to our project by adding a `@import url('')` statement to `src/styles.scss`.

Add Bootstrap to an Angular CLI Project

The default Angular CLI configuration generates components that consist of 4 files. The component class, an HTML template, a stylesheet and a spec file that contains the unit test.

In order to keep our components concise we  update our `AppComponent` and move the template and style from an external file to inline. This allows us to delete the 2 external files. 

We can configure our project to generate the template and the style 'inline' by default.

To do this we run the commands:
```
ng config schematics.@schematics/angular.component.inlineStyle true
ng config schematics.@schematics/angular.component.inlineTemplate true
```

The changes are made to `angular.json` in the project root.


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