Learn Alpine, Edge and Mocha

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

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?

Chai is a BDD / TDD assertion library for node and the browser that can be delightfully paired with any javascript testing framework.

chai

Every dependable library needs to have tests to ensure that you don't push accidental bugs. In this lesson, see how you can set up mocha and chai to start testing your library.

Setting up Unit Testing with Mocha and Chai

Now that you've got everything set up with mocha and chai, it's time to actually write tests. In this lesson you'll learn how to use `describe` and `it` to outline your tests and make sure you don't break your library in the future.

Unit Testing with Mocha and Chai

Mocha is a feature-rich JavaScript test framework running on Node.js and in the browser, making asynchronous testing simple and fun. Mocha tests run serially, allowing for flexible and accurate reporting, while mapping uncaught exceptions to the correct test cases.

mocha

Mocha is a testing framework that provides structure for unit tests. In this lesson, we will be setting up Mocha with npm and npm scripts, writing a "Hello World" unit test, then writing the code to make the test pass (as an example of Test Driven Development (TDD), with the "red-green-refactor" workflow).

JavaScript Testing Fundamentals: Hello world unit test with Mocha (in ES6)

In this lesson, we will use Chai's request method to test our Node application's API responses.
By the end of this lesson, you will know how to:
- install the prerequisites to use mocha and chai in your application
- test for HTTP status response codes
- test for a string of text on a page
- test for a json response and validate the properties of the object
- write tests that not only verify the response of your application, but the behavior as well


Test Node RESTful API with Mocha and Chai

Writing great ES6 style Promises for Node.js is only half the battle. Your great modules must include tests as well to ensure future iterations don't break them. In this lesson, I show you a simple ES6 Promise in Node.js, then walk you through creating tests in Mocha using chai and chai-as-promised to test both resolve and reject methods.

Testing ES6 Promises in Node.js using Mocha and Chai

In this lesson, you will learn how to verify your API server is returning HTTP 400 responses when clients submit incorrect data. Returning HTTP 400 ensures that your clients are notified of the incorrect usage. Testing for them ensures your API returns errors instead of incorrect responses when supplied with incorrect data.

Test for HTTP 400 responses with Mocha and Chai

ASP.NET is an open source web framework for building modern web apps and services with .NET. ASP.NET creates websites based on HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript that are simple, fast, and can scale to millions of users.

asp-net

If you want to improve a REST API beyond GET/POST&PUT and DELETE the next step would be adding the push functionality to send new data into your web applications. With ASP.NET Core and SignalR you can add this functionality with ease and keep your application up to date without letting the clients reloading their page manually.

[signalr npm](https://www.npmjs.com/package/@aspnet/signalr), [signalr Core](https://www.nuget.org/packages/Microsoft.AspNetCore.SignalR.Core/)

[archived] Expose Values for Real-time Consumption with SignalR in ASP.NET Core

Unit testing functions that invoke callbacks can require a lot of setup code. Using `sinon.spy` to create a fake callback function can simplify your unit tests while still allowing you to observe the output of the function you're testing.

Unit Test a Function that Invokes a Callback with a Sinon Spy

When testing functions that make HTTP requests, it's not preferable for those requests to actually run. Using the `nock` JavaScript library, we can mock out HTTP requests so that they don't actually happen, control the responses from those requests, and assert when requests are made.

Mock an HTTP request using Nock while unit testing

Node.js is a platform built on Chrome's JavaScript runtime for easily building fast, scalable network applications. Node.js uses an event-driven, non-blocking I/O model that makes it lightweight and efficient, perfect for data-intensive real-time applications that run across distributed devices.

node

When mocking a JavaScript function during a unit test, it can be helpful to force a mock function to return a value of your choosing. This allows you to verify that functions you're testing will behave correctly for every possible use case.

Much like [`sinon.spy()`](https://sinonjs.org/releases/v7.0.0/spies/), [`sinon.stub()`](https://sinonjs.org/releases/v7.0.0/stubs/) creates a mock function that prevents a real function from running. But, unlike `spy`, it also allows you to declare what value you'd like the mock function to return.

Mock a function's return value using a Sinon stub

Sometimes when writing a unit test, you know that the module you're testing imports a module that you would like to observe, or at the very least mock to prevent side effects like network activity or file system operations.

For JavaScript unit tests that run in Node, we can hijack the built-in `require` function by using the [`proxyquire`](https://www.npmjs.com/package/proxyquire) module, which allows us to mock one or more modules that are second-class dependencies in our unit test, replacing them with whatever we want.

This means we could replace functions with [no-ops](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NOP_%28code%29) to prevent side effects, or replace them with [Sinon spies](https://egghead.io/lessons/mocha-unit-test-a-function-that-invokes-a-callback-with-a-sinon-spy) to observe the inner workings of the module you're testing.

In this video, we'll demonstrate the basics of using Proxyquire to prevent and observe a file system operation.

Mock a Node module's dependencies using Proxyquire

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 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 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.

Topics

Instructors

Content Type

Free or Pro