Learn Alpine, Elasticsearch and Twit

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 course we’ll learn how to create Twitter bots. We’ll first learn how to interface with the Twitter API using Twit.js, which allows us to post statuses, search tweets, and interact with followers. We’ll create several example bots that show the diversity of possibilities, using powerful tools such as RiTa.js, Google’s Cloud Vision API, and Tracery. We’ll learn how to tweet data from Google Spreadsheets, and to compose and tweet a song for an audio bot. We’ll also learn how to host our bot logic on Heroku and Docker. 

Twitter API Client for node

Supports both the REST and Streaming API.

twit

Create your own twitter bots

In this course, you will learn the basics of using Elasticsearch within your application. You will learn how to store and retrieve data in Elasticsearch as well as how to leverage its powerful search features.
 
You will be able to design indices, types and maps for your application to leverage the most from Elasticsearch and you will learn how to monitor the health and performance of your Elasticsearch servers to identify and resolve capacity issues before they impact your application.

Throughout this course, we will be using the [Simpsons dataset](https://www.kaggle.com/wcukierski/the-simpsons-by-the-data) containing all of the Simpsons episodes, characters, and lines. It will be the foundation for learning to retrieve data from Elasticsearch, perform complex searches, and understand and implement best practices for storing data in Elasticsearch. 

elasticsearch

Get Started with Elasticsearch

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

We’ll get a real-time stream of tweets, and learn how to filter a stream by keyword, location, and user.

Use the Twitter Stream API with Twit.js

Closing and opening indices on Elasticsearch allow you to free up resources in your cluster when they aren’t needed, preventing you from scaling or growing your cluster to support unused indices. In this lesson, you will see how easy it is to do both and learn to do so on your own indices.

Close and open an Elasticsearch index

In this lesson, you will learn how to add new documents to the Elasticsearch data store using HTTP methods and the Elasticsearch API. You will also learn how Elasticsearch uniquely identifies each document and what happens when you attempt to create a document that already exists.

Add data to Elasticsearch

Elasticsearch provides several methods for using its powerful search features. In this lesson, you will be introduced to the `_search` endpoint, the datapoints returned in results, how to set a query timeout (and what a timeout *doesn’t* do), and how to search specific indices and types.

Search for data in Elasticsearch using the _search endpoint

Elasticsearch provides a powerful API over http for accessing its features. In this lesson, you will be introduced to the API and learn how to use it to get data from Elasticsearch using the browser and the popular command curl.
We will see how adding  query stream parameters can exclude or include the properties that we desire from our data.

Setup is specified in the `README.md` of the repository linked below.

Get data from Elasticsearch by id using http

By default, search results are limited to the top 10 results. In this lesson, you will learn how to change the pagination size, paginate through results, and you will learn about the performance implications of pagination on Elasticsearch.

Paginate through search results in Elasticsearch

Elasticsearch offers two API endpoints for updating documents. In this lesson you will learn how to use those endpoints to replace entire documents in the store and update partial information within a document.

Update data in Elasticsearch

Elasticsearch provides a full featured client for nodejs available via npm. In this lesson, you will learn to how install the client and use it to retrieve data from your Elasticsearch server.
We will walk through retrieving data through callbacks as well as using promises.

Get data from Elasticsearch by id using the Elasticsearch npm client

Simple searches can be done using query parameters, also known as “Search Lite” by Elasticsearch. You will learn how to perform query parameter searches in this lesson and also discover the upper limits of its usability in this lesson.

Topics

Instructors

Content Type