Learn Apollo, Dart and Docker

While "It works on my computer" might give you an excuse to close a bug ticket in the backlog, it doesn't really work when you're working on a team.

You need to ensure that your application can run regardless of what hardware your teammates are running or libraries they have installed.

Docker solves this problem by collecting everything your application needs to run into a container.

Containers aren't just for source code. They can hold configuration, scripts, and even their own filesystem. It's similar to a Virtual Machine, without having to bring a full operating system along for the ride.

Because containers run in isolation, there is some configuration involved to allow for files to be saved and containers to communicate with one another.

One of the most useful ways to get your head around Docker is to see it in action.

Follow along with Joel Lord as he works through the process of preparing an application to run in separate containers for the frontend and backend of an application that searches for gifs and re-encodes them with a caption supplied by the user.

You'll see how to configure the separate containers to communicate with one another, work with environment variables, and persist data to your local machine. Along the way, you'll pick up some tips on useful commands and bash scripting. Finally, you'll learn how to use Docker Compose to make it easy to run multiple containers simultaneously.


Docker containers wrap a piece of software in a complete filesystem that contains everything needed to run: code, runtime, system tools, system libraries – anything that can be installed on a server. This guarantees that the software will always run the same, regardless of its environment.

docker

Containerize Full-Stack JavaScript Applications with Docker

Dart is an object-oriented language you can use for building web applications, server-side code, and even mobile apps. It’s expressive, powerful, and has a friendly learning curve. 

In this course, we will look at the syntax and semantics of the Dart programming language. We will also cover various aspects of the Dart ecosystem, including its tools and packages that help make you a productive developer. This knowledge is applicable when developing software for client, server, and especially mobile with the Flutter framework. 

This course is beginner-friendly, but is well-suited for experience programmers as well. 

Dart is an open-source, scalable programming language, with robust libraries and runtimes, for building web, server, and mobile apps.

dart

Get Started with Dart

Docker Fundamentals

GraphQL is a fan favorite for good reason. It lets a client make specific, complex, and/or aggregate queries for data, and it’s user-friendly to boot.

If you’ve been meaning to learn GraphQL and start harnessing its powers, this is a great place to start.

This course is for GraphQL newbies with a basic understanding of React. It focuses on the client-side implementation of GraphQL usage using the Apollo client.

We’ll start with a guide on how to add the Apollo client to an existing project, then move on using the Query and Mutation components to fetch and manipulate data using a GraphQL API.

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

GraphQL Data in React with Apollo Client

In this course we will take a simple Node.js app that connects to a MongoDB database and uses an Express web server, and learn how to setup a full software development deployment process as well as how to properly “Dockerize” the app. 

We’ll step through setting up proper version control techniques, managing configuring within the environment, setting up proper build/deploy/run processes, and all with abiding by Docker best practices. We’ll also make sure our deployment is setup for scale, and have consistent development practices in place for reliable app deployments.

Build a Twelve-Factor Node.js App with Docker

Most developers would raise an eyebrow if they saw database queries being done in a for-loop, but GraphQL provides just enough abstraction that it isn't always intuitive exactly how many times each resolver fires at scale, nor is it obvious how to batch operations efficiently and still return the correct results to the correct consumer.

You'll learn how to use the GraphQL Data Loader pattern to improve the performance of your application, and solve scaling issues before they become a problem.

To do this, we'll first implement our own naive version of the pattern to understand why the API is shaped how it is. Then we will switch over to the official DataLoader package and explore the benefits further.

## Skills you'll Gain

- Implement a cache layer to optimize your requests
- Batch requests so your Database isn't overloaded
- Build a performant GraphQL API

Apollo provides a universal GraphQL API on top of your existing services, so you can build new application features fast without waiting on backend changes.

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Use GraphQL Data Loaders to Prevent Scaling Issues by Batching & Caching Database Requests

At the core of a good client-side GraphQL library is a cache. The cache is very important for improving the efficiency of your data retrieval and providing your users with a clean user experience.

In this course, we're going to see how Apollo's powerful cache helps easily solve complex UI problems, such as pagination, handling loading and error states, optimistic updates, and minimizing network requests.

We'll start from the basics, and look at how to make queries and mutations, but then we'll look at how the cache is behind most of Apollo's immediate benefits. We'll explore in-depth how it works, how it stores data, and how we can manually modify it manually for advanced scenarios.

Even if your backend doesn't fully support GraphQL yet, we'll look at how to write GraphQL queries in your components that retrieve local client state under the hood - or that can even make REST API calls.

Manage State in React Apps with Apollo Client and GraphQL

**Get started building dynamic apps with GraphQL and Vue3.**

As your app scales, so does the complexity of managing your routes and API endpoints. 

It gets tiresome. 

But this aspect of web development can be streamlined considerably! 

GraphQL is a powerful tool for querying and mutating your data. In this course, we are going to create a Vue3 app that leverages GraphQL to create a dynamic front end.

But what does GraphQL *do*? 

Its power comes from giving you a *single* endpoint that you make all your queries to. Instead of making a request to a specific endpoint and getting a fixed response, you can write flexible queries to a single endpoint.

![REST vs GraphQL diagram](https://res.cloudinary.com/dg3gyk0gu/image/upload/v1638989029/course-resources/create-a-graphql-powered-vue-3-application/rest_vs_graphql.png)

Vue3 has some great new features that we will be exploring, such as the setup script syntax. But you won't just be exploring Vue3's new features, we will be building a dynamic front end with an index, view pages generated from data, and forms.

To make our frontend dynamic, we will be powering it with GraphQL. We start with the basics by creating queries but we move on to more advanced topics such as query params, mutations, and pagination.

To actually use GraphQL in our Vue app we will be using the Vue Apollo Client. Which gives us convenient methods for making queries, getting the data back into the client, and handling errors.

## Gain These Skills

- Add GraphQL to a Vue 3 project
- Query and mutate data with GraphQL in Vue 3
- Create data-driven views with Apollo client
- Handle routing within a Vue 3 project
- Implement optimistic updates and infinite scroll

## Prerequisites

Some entry-level knowledge on Vue and GraphQL is recommended, but this course is beginner-friendly enough to where it isn't a strict requirement.

If you want to build a deeper foundation for both Vue and GraphQL we have a couple of awesome courses that you can hack through. 

For Vue, check out **[The Beginner's Guide to Vue 3](https://egghead.io/courses/the-beginner-s-guide-to-vue-3-1c46da8b),** which is also by Kevin. It's great for both newcomers to web dev and veterans alike. 

And for GraphQL, work through **[GraphQL Query Language](https://egghead.io/courses/graphql-query-language)** from Eve Porcello. Eve literally wrote the book on learning GraphQL and her course is similarly top quality. 

## What's Next?

Progressive Web Apps are a more advanced topic, and converting an existing Single Page **Vue** App into one makes for an excellent follow-up project. **->** [Offline-First Progressive Web Apps (PWA) in Vue.js](https://egghead.io/courses/offline-first-progressive-web-apps-pwa-in-vue-js)

If you want to take your **GraphQL** game to the next level, then becoming an expert in designing GraphQL schemas is the way to go. **->** [Designing GraphQL Schemas](https://egghead.io/courses/designing-graphql-schemas-99db)

And I know the following recommendation is a React course but *it really is that good*. You will learn some **advanced** techniques that will be applicable to Vue or any other Apollo compatible framework that you work with. **->** [Manage State in React Apps with Apollo Client and GraphQL](https://egghead.io/courses/manage-state-in-react-apps-with-apollo-client-and-graphql-a45b3b89)

Vue (pronounced /vjuː/, like view) is a progressive framework for building user interfaces. Unlike other monolithic frameworks, Vue is designed from the ground up to be incrementally adoptable. The core library is focused on the view layer only, and is very easy to pick up and integrate with other libraries or existing projects. On the other hand, Vue is also perfectly capable of powering sophisticated Single-Page Applications when used in combination with modern tooling and supporting libraries.

Create a GraphQL Powered Vue 3 Application

Docker containers are stateless by default. In order to persist filesystem changes, you must use docker volumes. In this lesson, we will go over how to copy files over to Docker containers, how to create volumes and copy data to them, and also how to mount remote folders for persisting updates.

Create Docker Volumes for Persistent Storage

In this lesson we will cover proper version tagging when building Docker images, creating a docker-compose.yml file for proper release management, and running the tagged release by using Docker Compose to launch app resources as Docker containers.

Build, Release and Run Containers with Docker Compose

NGINX is a free, open-source, high-performance HTTP server and reverse proxy, as well as an IMAP/POP3 proxy server. 

nginx

Learn about the concepts of managing data within Docker volumes, including all of the commands to create and manage volumes. We'll demonstrate how to mount a Docker volume to one or many containers by creating and mounting a volume to an Nginx proxy, and then verify the output with curl. You'll also see how changes to files within volumes of one container propagate to other containers with the same volume mounted, and learn various commands to inspect Docker volumes.

Manage Data within Docker Volumes

In this lesson we will cover how to build your own custom Docker image from scratch. We'll walk through the process of starting a Debian container, installing packages and working through configuration issues, as well as a strategy for building a Dockerfile.

Build Your Own Custom Docker Image

In this lesson, we will look at `docker container prune` to remove old docker containers. We can also use `docker system prune` to clean up any containers, images, volumes, and networks all in one command.

Prune Old Unused Docker Containers and Images

In this lesson, we'll find out the basics of running Docker containers. We'll go over how to download images from Docker Hub, what happens when you stop containers, how to restart a container once it's been stopped, and also how to remove containers.

Run, Stop and Remove Docker Containers

Learn how to build a simple Node.js web server with Docker. In this lesson, we'll create a Dockerfile for a simple Node.js script, copy and build it into a Docker image, and start a container to run the web server.

Build a Simple Node.js Web Server with Docker

Learn the benefits of running one-off, short-lived Docker containers. Short-Lived containers are useful to execute one-line commands or setup scheduled tasks. We'll demonstrate setting up a cronjob from the host machine to tap into the benefits of running automated, timed scripts with Docker.

Run Short-Lived Docker Containers

We’ll learn how to host a complex Twitter bot (a bot that requires external tools that need to be installed on the system) with Heroku and Docker. We'll learn how to configure our Docker file, using an image that already has node installed on it. We'll use the Heroku Container Registry to deploy an app to heroku that was created with a local container, and deploy it as a worker app.

Host a Complex Bot using Heroku and Docker

Learn how to setup an Nginx proxy server with Docker that sits in front of a Node.js app. You can use a proxy to control the flow of frontend requests hitting your app, as well as to achieve better performance and scalability. We'll create a sample Node.js app, configure a default Nginx configuration file for proxying web requests, build both Node.js and Nginx Docker images, and learn how to link everything up and get it running with Docker specifics.

Setup an Nginx Proxy for a Node.js App with Docker

Learn the basics of downloading and pulling Docker images from Docker Hub. Learn the difference between default tags and version specific tags. Also learn how to display all images, and different ways to remove images.

Download and Remove Docker Images

Getting nodejs to run inside of Docker is relatively simple. Getting nodejs to run inside of Docker while using recommended best practices takes some planning. In this lesson, I’ll show you how to get a simple nodejs web server running in Docker on your local workstation while adhering to best practices.

Deploy Node.js on Docker

Docker containers should be designed to be stateless, meaning that they can survive system reboots and container terminations gracefully, and without the loss of data. Designing with stateless containers in mind will also help your app grow and make future horizontal scaling trivial. 

In this lesson, we will review an app that saves uploaded files to the filesystem. Then we will learn how to setup a persistent volume for the uploaded files so they can survive Docker container halts, restarts, stops and respawns.