Learn Alpine, Particle and Webstorm

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 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 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 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

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

When exploring a new framework or technology, it is nice to have a seed project or sandbox so you can just get in and start playing. Let's build our React playground using npm, browserify, 6to5, and more within WebStorm!

Setting up a React Playground Dev Environment

Lightweight yet powerful IDE, perfectly equipped for complex client-side development and server-side development with Node.js.

webstorm

John Lindquist is a WebStorm wizard. In this lesson, he'll show you some of the tips & tricks he uses to squeeze maximum productivity out of his tool of choice. 

Tips & Tricks

You can easily share your code from WebStorm with others using the "Create Gist" feature. This lesson walks you through how to create a gist from a single or multiples files and also how to use gist.run to share a running version of your code

WebStorm - Sharing a Gist

WebStorm can save you tons of time by managing your imports for you. John walks you through a few key WebStorm importing tips to help speed up your importing workflow.

WebStorm - Managing Imports

A quick tutorial covering installing Karma and running tests from the command line and Webstorm.

Introduction to Karma

AngularJS is an open-source JavaScript framework, maintained by Google, that assists with running single-page applications. Its goal is to augment web-based applications with model–view–controller (MVC) capability, in an effort to make both development and testing easier.

angularjs

In this lesson John shows some tricks for speeding up your test suite. He digs into some handy features of WebStorm, including the *ddescriber* plugin, as well as some alternative methods for Jasmine for selectively running your tests.

Speed Testing with WebStorm and Jasmine

In this lesson, we'll walk through installing a custom color scheme into our [WebStorm](https://www.jetbrains.com/webstorm/) IDE. Dayle Rees's [daylerees/colour-schemes](https://github.com/daylerees/colour-schemes/blob/master/jetbrains/peacocks-in-space.icls) has a great collection of themes ready to install in different formats for various editors.

For this example, we will install the [Peacocks In Space](https://github.com/daylerees/colour-schemes/blob/master/jetbrains/peacocks-in-space.icls) theme into an OS X [WebStorm 11 EAP](https://confluence.jetbrains.com/display/WI/WebStorm+EAP) installation. _Note: This process will be very similar (or identical) for previous versions of WebStorm and other editors in the [JetBrain's family of editors](https://www.jetbrains.com/)._

WebStorm - Installing Custom Color Schemes (dayleress/colour-schemes)

WebStorm can easily help you set up a new Angular 2 project with never even touching a terminal. This lesson shows you all the neat GUI tricks you need to know to get up and running.

WebStorm - Setting Up Angular 2

grunt

In this lesson you will install GruntJS and get up and running with your first task, initial configuration, and how to get Grunt methods auto-completing in WebStorm.

Introduction to Grunt

JetBrains IDEs have a very good code completion for JavaScript code but you can do it even better by adding TypeScript typings, even if you don’t use TypeScript in your project. Should work in WebStorm, PhpStorm, RubyMine, PyCharm and others.

Improve JavaScript Code Completion in WebStorm with TypeScript Typings

particle

Before powering up the Particle Photon we are going to look at what each of the components are on the board.

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