Learn Alpine, Neo4j and Redwoodjs

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 will learn some of the basics of getting data into and out of Neo4J, as well as touch on some of the libraries and tooling available in the Neo4J community ecosystem, which we will leverage to quickly create and use a full-featured GraphQL API.

We will start by learning how to run and interact with Neo4J locally. Then we will develop a graph model in which to store the data that we pull from SWAPI via REST. We will then create an Apollo GraphQL API driven by a few simple schemas which fit into this model. We will then write some simple code to crawl SWAPI and insert the data into Neo4J through our GraphQL API. Once there is data in the store, we will learn about some of the features in `neo4j-graphql-js` that make connecting and accessing our graph Nodes easier.

Neo4j delivers the lightning-fast read and write performance you need. Neo4j combines native graph storage, scalable architecture optimized for speed, and ACID compliance to ensure predictability of relationship-based queries.

neo4j

Build a Neo4J & GraphQL API

RedwoodJS takes the JAMstack philosophy to the next level. It brings together all the tools modern web development has to offer:

- React
- GraphQL
- Prisma

RedwoodJS abstracts database management away from you so that you can just build your schema and it will do all the plumbing. This collection will go over how to create a RedwoodJS project and the scripts that will help make your developer experience a joy.


Bringing full-stack to the JAMstack

Do you love the JAMstack philosophy but need a database-backed web app? Want great developer experience and easy scaling? Redwood is here! Built on React, GraphQL, and Prisma, Redwood works with the components and development workflow you love, but with simple conventions and helpers to make your experience even better.

redwoodjs

Introduction to RedwoodJS: full-stack framework for JAMstack

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.

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react

We use `yarn redwood generate page` (`yarn rw` for short) in this lesson to generate an `IndexPage` component. 

The first argument to `yarn rw generate page` is the name of the page you are generating. The second argument is the path you want the page to show up on. So `yarn rw generate page index /` will generate an `IndexPage` component and insert a route entry in our `web/src/Routes.js` file.

We learn that redwood import `React` for you so you don't have to import it manually when you are creating a component.

Generate a Page Using the Redwood CLI

In this lesson, we are going over how to generate a `RedwoodJS` project.

We can create a `RedwoodJS` project with `yarn create redwood-app ./my-redwood-project`.

`yarn` will generate the `RedwoodJS` app in the file folder you specified without installing any globals.

To run the `RedwoodJS` app, we use `yarn redwood dev`. This runs the Redwood client as well as the `GraphQL` backend.

Generate a Redwood Project

RedwoodJS provides a `Link` component that we can use to navigate around our app. We can provide a `to` prop with the path that we want to navigate to.

RedwoodJS takes this a step further and provides a `routes` object from `@redwoodjs/router`. This object is aware of all the routes defined in `web/Routes.js`. This allows us to use the methods on this object rather than referencing the our routes with a string literal. We can then change the route path without having to change all of the references to that route all over our app.

Use RedwoodJS Link and routes Object to Navigate

RedwoodJS gives us a cli command to generate layouts.

`yarn redwood generate layout main`

This will generate a `MainLayout` component in `src/layouts/MainLayout/`. We can use this layout component to define any headers or footers we want to share across multiple pages. 

Extract a RedwoodJS Layout Component

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

There are different types of data in Neo4J: Nodes and Relationships. We will cover the ways to create each type of data: creating nodes with properties, creating nodes with relationships, and creating constraints on nodes and relationships.

Create Nodes and Relationships in Neo4J with Cypher

Once there is data in Neo4J, we need to be able to access it. We will cover the structure of a cypher query to return parts of our graph.

Read Nodes and Relationships in Neo4J with Cypher

The data in our graph is unlikely to stay the same forever. We will cover the syntax used to find and modify existing data in different ways through the use of parameters.

Update Nodes and Relationships in Neo4J with Cypher

Nothing lives forever, so we need to know how to use DELETE and DETACH to get rid of nodes and relationships we no longer want in our graph.

Delete Nodes and Relationships in Neo4J with Cypher

We will learn about `neo4j-graphql-js` and how to leverage it to quickly create a full-featured API backed by Neo4J. We will create a few simple schemas to represent our model.

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