Learn Faunadb, Postgres and Rails

Dive into the world of real-time web development with this hands-on course! You’ll learn how to build a dynamic chat application using Fauna Streams and Next.js 14, focusing on the essentials and best practices.

**What You’ll Learn:**
- **Next.js Best Practices:** Master Next.js best practices for building fast, maintainable apps.
- **Server-Side Rendering (SSR):** Learn SSR techniques and master features like server actions, server side form submission etc.
- **Database Access Patterns:** Efficiently connect and retrieve data using Fauna.
- **Real-Time Updates:** Implement real-time updates with Fauna Streams.
- **Basic Authentication:** Secure your chat app with simple authentication methods.

**Course Highlights:**
- Practical, project-based learning.
- Clear, step-by-step instructions.
- Focus on modern, real-time web development.
- Tips and tricks for optimizing performance.

By the end of this course, you’ll have a working real-time chat app and a solid grasp of the tools and techniques used to build it.


Next.js is a minimalistic framework for server-rendered React applications.

Build a Real-time Next.js 14 Chat App with Fauna 

FaunaDB is a global serverless database that gives you ubiquitous, low latency access to app data, without sacrificing data correctness. It eliminates layers of app code for manually handling data anomalies, security, and scale, creating a friendlier dev experience for you and better app experience for your users.

faunadb

Now that we have user information available to us, we want to connect messages created to the users that are sending them. When we add `read` privileges to the `User` model, we can call `User.identity()` to get the user data we need to set for messages. 

Update Fauna Messages Collection with Authors

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

For user signin, we'll implement a proper server action by creating a `actions.js` file where our server actions can live. In our login page, we'll set the component to be a client component to hold some state. This way we can use the new `useFormState` hook from `react-dom` and pass in our login server action.

Within the action we'll call our `UserLogin` function from Fauna and set a cookie with the secret we get back that we can use throughout our application.

Implement Fauna Signin with Next.js Server Actions and useFormState React Hook

Now it's time to actually sign users up for our appliaction.

We'll implement the `doSignup` function that we created earlier. This function will run on the server with the `'use server'` directive so we can instantiate a fauna client and call `UserRegistration` within this function.

From there we'll redirect the user to the `/signin` page which will error out because it's not implemented yet.

Implement Signup Functionality through Fauna with Next.js 14 Server Actions

To have actual users in our application we need to represent those users in our database. Fauna has quite a few ways you can do user authentication but we'll be creating our own using a few built-in Fauna helpers.

We'll start by setting up the necessary Fauna logic for users. We'll add a `User` collection as well as a `functions.fsl` file that we'll expose user sign up and log in. Here we'll see how Fauna gives us a built in `Credentials` document to handle email and password for a user. It also has a login function that it exposes to make that easy for us which will generate a token for a user on login.

After setting up our functions, we'll add an `UnAuthRole` as well as an `AuthRole` and give proper actions for each role.

Add Fauna User Authentication to a Next.js App

To stream messages, we'll implement logic very similar to how we stream the creation of rooms from earlier.

First, we need to convert `MessageList` into a client component. We'll get an interesting error saying that only plain objects can be passed to client components from server components. This happens because the response we get back from Fauna is pretty complex. To fix this error we'll create a simple messages array and pass that down to the `MessageList` component.

In the `MessageList` component we'll create a `useEffect` that will initiate a Fauna stream within a ref and push new messages into state that we are holding in the component.

Stream Chat Messages in Real-time in Next.js from Fauna

Now it's time to actually create messages and display them in rooms within our application.

We'll start by creating a `MessageForm` component that will send a `Message.create` query to Fauna on form submission.

Next, we'll display these messages by updating our room query to also get all the messages for that room. You'll see that we can still just perform one query because we pass in the room id and call `Message.where(.room == room)` to the query.

One note here is if you console log your messages in your page component, you'll notice that the logs show up in the terminal and not the browser. This is because we are using a server component.

Create and Display Messages using Fauna within a Room in Next.js

We'll take a moment to explore how Fauna handles one-to-many relationships inside the fauna shell. 

First we'll create a `Message` collection.

Then we'll connect to the cloud database by running `fauna shell`, because I'm logged and configured this connects to the database I'm working with.

In the terminal we'll see how to create multiple messages that are associated with a room and query for those messages by room.

Explore Faunas one-to-many Relationships between Collections in the Terminal

With rooms being created and displayed on the index page, it's now time to create dynamic routes for each room so that when you click on a room name, you are actually navigated to that room.

We'll do this by using Next.js dynamic route syntax `/rooms/[...id]/page.js`. This will render a page on any `/rooms/:id` passing the component we define the `:id` as params.

Here we'll take that id and fetch the room data from fauna with a `Room.byId` query.

Create Dynamic Routes in Next.js for Chat Rooms

We can add rooms but our application does not update and display rooms when a room is added. This should happen in real-time.

To fix this we'll add a useEffect that will query for all our rooms and use fauna's `client.stream` API to ensure that this happens in real-time.

List Available Chat Rooms in Real-time in Next.js from Fauna

The first step to building a chat app is to have rooms to chat in. We'll need to create a Room collection (or table) in Fauna that we'll be adding to.

In our Next Application we'll create a simple form that has a submit handler that will create those rooms in Fauna. We need to hold some state in our component so we'll turn the page into a client component with `'use client'`.

There will be a little bit more Fauna set up to get things working. We need to create a key for our application to interact with our database so we'll create a key by running `Key.create` in our `fauna shell`. Then we'll install the `fauna` client and make a `client.query` to create the room.

Create a Fauna Room Collection in Next.js with the fauna Client

The first step is to install and configure our database that will be backing our Next.js application. We'll be using Fauna so we head over to the Fauna website and create a database.

Back in our terminal we will install `fauna-shell` so we can interact and manage our database from within our project. After some initializing steps from the CLI we'll be set up to build the app out.

Initialize and Configure a Fauna Database inside a Next.js project with fauna-shell

PostgreSQL is a powerful, open source object-relational database system.

postgres

We create a PostgreSQL join table for `likes` in the [Supabase](https://supabase.com) dashboard. This has a many-to-many relationship between the `profiles` and `tweets` table, allowing us to store each instance of a like between a user and a tweet.

Additionally, we create Row Level Security (RLS) polices to enable `select`, `insert` and `delete`.

## Code Snippets

**Create likes table**

```sql
create table public.likes (
  id uuid default gen_random_uuid() primary key,
  created_at timestamp with time zone default timezone('utc'::text, now()) not null,
  user_id uuid references public.profiles on delete cascade not null,
  tweet_id uuid references public.tweets on delete cascade not null
);
```

**Enable Row Level Security**

```sql
alter table public.likes enable row level security;
```

**Enable insert action with RLS policy**

```sql
create policy "authenticated users can insert their own likes" ON "public"."likes"
as permissive for select
to authenticated
using (user_id = auth.uid());
```

**Enable delete action with RLS policy**

```sql
create policy "authenticated users can delete their own likes" ON "public"."likes"
as permissive for delete
to authenticated
using (user_id = auth.uid());
```

**Enable select action with RLS policy**

```sql
create policy "authenticated users can select likes" ON "public"."likes"
as permissive for select
to authenticated
using (true);
```

## Resources

- [Managing user data docs](https://supabase.com/docs/guides/auth/managing-user-data)
- [Row Level Security docs](https://supabase.com/docs/guides/auth/row-level-security)

Create a PostgreSQL Join Table in Supabase Studio

[Supabase](https://supabase.com/) has an `auth.users` table that contains information about our user and their session. We want to display the user's name, username and avatar alongside their tweets, but the `auth.users` table cannot be publicly accessible, as it contains sensitive information.

In this lesson, we create a new table called `profiles` and populate it with the data we want to display from the `auth.users` table. Additionally, we set up a PostgreSQL Function and Trigger to create a new profile for any user added to the `auth.users` table.

Lastly, we create an RLS policy for the `profiles` table to enable read access, and re-generate our TypeScript definitions file to contain our new table.

## Code Snippets

**Create profiles table**

```sql
create table public.profiles (
  id uuid not null references auth.users on delete cascade primary key,
  name text not null,
  username text not null,
  avatar_url text not null
);
```

**Enable Row Level Security**

```sql
alter table public.profiles enable row level security;
```

**Enable read access with RLS policy**

```sql
create policy "anyone can select profiles" ON "public"."profiles"
as permissive for select
to public
using (true);
```

**Create PostgreSQL Function to create profile**

```sql
create function public.create_profile_for_user()
returns trigger
language plpgsql
security definer set search_path = public
as $$
begin
  insert into public.profiles (id, name, username, avatar_url)
  values (
    new.id,
    new.raw_user_meta_data->'name',
    new.raw_user_meta_data->'user_name',
    new.raw_user_meta_data->'avatar_url'
  );
  return new;
end;
$$;
```

**Create PostgreSQL Trigger to create profile**

```sql
create trigger on_auth_user_created
  after insert on auth.users
  for each row execute procedure public.create_profile_for_user();
```

## Resources

- [Managing user data docs](https://supabase.com/docs/guides/auth/managing-user-data)
- [Row Level Security docs](https://supabase.com/docs/guides/auth/row-level-security)

Automatically Generate a Profile for Every User with PostgreSQL Function Triggers

[Supabase](https://supabase.com/) uses the `auth.users` table to store information about our users and their sessions. In this lesson, we add a column to the `tweets` table to associate each tweet with one of our users.

Additionally, we set up cascading deletes, so when a user is deleted from the `auth.users` table, their tweets are also deleted.

Lastly, because our database schema has changed, our TypeScript definitions are now incorrect. Therefore, we use the Supabase CLI to introspect our PostgreSQL schema and create a new `database.types.ts` file.

## Code Snippets

**Add foreign key relationship to auth.users**

```sql
alter table public.tweets
add user_id uuid references auth.users on delete cascade not null;
```

**Generate TypeScript definitions**

```bash
npx supabase gen types typescript --project-id your-project-id > lib/database.types.ts
```

## Resources

- [Supabase Auth docs](https://supabase.com/docs/guides/auth)
- [Supabase CLI](https://supabase.com/docs/guides/cli)
- [Generating TypeScript definitions](https://supabase.com/docs/guides/api/rest/generating-types)

Setup a Foreign Key relationship between PostgreSQL tables

Since we're using [Supabase](https://supabase.com/) to authenticate our users, it knows who our user is throughout the rest of the Supabase environment.

In this lesson, we modify our Row Level Security (RLS) policy to only apply to the `authenticated` role to ensure that only authenticated users can select tweets.

Additionally, we use the `useRouter` hook and `router.refresh()` to run our Server Component again and fetch fresh data from Supabase, after the user signs in or out.

## Code Snippets

**Enable authenticated read access with RLS policy**

```sql
create policy "anyone can select tweets" ON "public"."tweets"
as permissive for select
to authenticated
using (true);
```

## Resources

- [Row Level Security docs](https://supabase.com/docs/guides/auth/row-level-security)
- [useRouter hook](https://nextjs.org/docs/app/api-reference/functions/use-router#userouter)

Restrict Access to Authenticated Users with Supabase RLS Policies

[Supabase](https://supabase.com/) is a collection of open source tools that wrap around a PostgreSQL database - Hosting, Auth, Realtime, File Storage, Edge Functions etc. In this lesson, we go to [database.new](https://database.new) to create a free Supabase project.

Additionally, we create a `tweets` table and populate it with some seed data.

## Code Snippets

**Create a `tweets` table**

```sql
create table if not exists tweets (
  id uuid default gen_random_uuid() primary key,
  created_at timestamp with time zone default timezone('utc'::text, now()) not null,
  title text not null
);
```

**Insert tweets**

```sql
insert into tweets(title)
values
  ('first tweet'),
  ('second tweet'),
  ('third tweet');
```

## Resources

- [Supabase docs](https://supabase.com/docs)
- [Supabase SQL Editor](https://app.supabase.com/project/_/sql)

Create a New Supabase Project and Basic PostgreSQL Schema

Let's implement the delete shop functionality to the buttons that we've added to the shop manage page. Fauna allows you to define custom resolvers to run multiple database operations so you don't have to make multiple trips to the database.

We'll define a new mutation in our GraphQL schema that will take in a shop id and sets the `@resolver` directive which will tell Fauna to create a custom resolver that we can define within Fauna.

In our Fauna database, you'll see that we have a new user generated function created. This function accepts Fauna Query Language which is the native api for interacting with Fauna. We'll perform a multi-step operation by deleting the shop and then all of the products associated with that shop.

You can [read more about Fauna Query Language here and take the getting started guide to get a feel for the language](https://docs.fauna.com/fauna/current/api/fql/).

Run Multiple DB Operations with Custom Resolvers and Fauna Query Language

When a vendor manages their shops, they might want to click into the shop and mange the products associated with that shop. Let's create a page for that.

I'll create a details route that will host this information. On this page we will write a `GetShop` query that will take in the shop id that is pulled from the route. Similar to the shops page, we will iterate over the products on the shop and add buttons to manage individual products.

Create Shop Details View that uses GraphQL to Query Fauna by Shop Id

If you have been poking around the queries at this point in the course, you might notice that when you query for a product, you can get all the associated shop information. This is because we defined the `@relation` on the `Shop` property within `Product`. This allowed Fauna to create an index behind the scenes to easily fetch this data. 

We haven't done the same for the `Product` property on the `Shop` so we can't access the data. When we add a new `@relation` to `Product` we can then grab all the product information from shop queries that we like. 

This is based on the [Document Model Relationship in Fauna that you can read more about here](https://docs.fauna.com/fauna/current/learn/tutorials/graphql/relationships).

Add a Product Relation to Shop to understand Document Model Relationship in Fauna

It would be great to show a list of shops that a vendor has created. To do this we will need to create a new query `getShopsByOwnerId` that accepts a string that will be our user id. Like before, we'll merge this schema change into Fauna and update our roles to make this request.

On the frontend we'll create a shop list component and pass in the user token that Auth0 gives us for the logged in user.

Query Data by Property with GraphQL and Fauna in Next.js

In this lesson, you'll discover how to style View Transitions using CSS pseudo-selectors to create custom animation effects. We'll transform the default cross-fade into a smooth slide transition by targeting the ::view-transition-old and ::view-transition-new pseudo-elements. You'll learn how these powerful selectors give you precise control over your transition animations, allowing you to create more engaging and personalized user experiences with just a few lines of CSS.

Customize View Transitions with CSS Using view-transition-old and view-transition-new

In this lesson, you'll learn how to implement smooth state transitions in your web applications using the browser's built-in View Transitions API. We'll create a simple example that demonstrates how to animate between different text states with just a few lines of code - no external libraries required. This powerful native API makes it easy to add professional-looking transitions to your user interface, enhancing the user experience with minimal effort.

Create Smooth UI Transitions with the Native View Transitions API

I've been using Cursor for a very long time and their "Agent" feature in Composer is fairly new, so I'm still getting used to it. But since Windsurf recently got onto the stage with their Cascade agent, they've slowly been gaining the mind share on the UX for coding agents. I decided to put them to the test by putting Windsurf and Cursor on the exact same screen side by side trying to accomplish the same task and to see which workflow I would prefer. I've been a diehard Cursor user for over a year now, so it's going to take a lot for me to switch to a different IDE. But I just have to say, even from this simple demo, Windsurf is looking pretty nice.

This lesson is just going to walk through creating a CLI using both tools to print out inspirational quotes and to explore how they approach the step-by-step of installing packages and running commands and setting up all the files we need to get this running.

Windsurf Cascade vs. Cursor Composer Agent Side-by-Side Comparison

This TypeScript tutorial explains how to use generics, allowing for different types to be passed as arguments. It discusses the use of shorthand syntax in generics and illustrates with examples. This method is useful for library creation, providing type safety and control to the user.

```typescript
interface PhotoMetadata<T> {
  title: string;
  takenAt: Date;
  customData: T;
}

// Function that processes a photo with custom metadata
function processPhoto<T>(photo: PhotoMetadata<T>): {
  processedTitle: string;
  daysSinceCapture: number;
  customDataSummary: T;
} {
  const today = new Date();
  const daysSinceCapture = Math.floor(
    (today.getTime() - photo.takenAt.getTime()) / (1000 * 60 * 60 * 24)
  );

  return {
    processedTitle: photo.title.toUpperCase(),
    daysSinceCapture,
    customDataSummary: photo.customData
  };
}

// Example usage with different custom data shapes
type CameraSettings = {
  iso: number;
  aperture: string;
  shutterSpeed: string;
}

type LocationData = {
  latitude: number;
  longitude: number;
  locationName: string;
}

// Using with camera settings
const photoWithCamera: PhotoMetadata<CameraSettings> = {
  title: "Sunset at beach",
  takenAt: new Date('2024-01-15'),
  customData: {
    iso: 100,
    aperture: "f/2.8",
    shutterSpeed: "1/1000"
  }
};

// Using with location data
const photoWithLocation: PhotoMetadata<LocationData> = {
  title: "Mountain vista",
  takenAt: new Date('2024-02-01'),
  customData: {
    latitude: 45.5231,
    longitude: -122.6765,
    locationName: "Mount Hood"
  }
};

const processedCameraPhoto = processPhoto(photoWithCamera);
const processedLocationPhoto = processPhoto(photoWithLocation);

processedCameraPhoto.customDataSummary.iso
processedLocationPhoto.customDataSummary.longitude

```

Basic Explanation of Typescript Generics

A very basic explanation of generic function arguments

I've been using Cursor as my primary editor for over a year now, but recently I've heard wonderful things about Windsurf AI Agent features. I decided to record myself building out something I've always wanted to make, but never made the time for.

In this lesson, I demonstrate how to leverage Windsurf's powerful agent process to create a fun word-guessing game inspired by Heads Up. Watch as I build an interactive application featuring category selection and word navigation, complete with data hosting on GitHub Gists and deployment to GitHub Pages - all in under 30 minutes (before editing the lesson down to 12 minutes)!

What makes this project particularly exciting is how Windsurf eliminates the typical friction points of development. While this game was always on my project wishlist, the overhead of setup, configuration, and deployment made it hard to justify the time investment. Windsurf's agent process handles all these pain points seamlessly, from managing URLs to orchestrating deployment.

This lesson perfectly showcases how AI agents can help developers bring their backlog of project ideas to life, transforming what would typically be time-consuming tasks into efficient, enjoyable development experiences.

Build a Word Game with Windsurf's Cascade AI Agent



Discover how to harness the power of Cursor IDE's Composer Agent feature to optimize your code. In this lesson, you'll witness an AI agent doing all the work to generate test suites, implement performance benchmarks, and create optimized function variations - all without writing a single line of code. You'll learn how to validate performance improvements through data-driven benchmarking, ensuring that optimizations are backed by concrete metrics rather than speculation. This hands-on demonstration showcases a groundbreaking approach to automated function development that combines the precision of test-driven development with the efficiency of AI-powered optimization.


Agent-Driven Development in Cursor: Testing, Benchmarking, and Optimizing Functions

This course is aimed for using `zod` effectively in projects based on TypeScript (both browser and node.js). The benefits you gain with this course is not just simply coding, but also understanding when/why/how should you perform runtime validation.

`zod` is the missing piece to TypeScript's capabilities, which can guarantee type-safety only in compile-time.

`zod` can be used whenever the compiler cannot guarantee what happens in runtime. And... it's a very frequent usecase, such as HTTP calls, websockets, etc.

In this course you get quickly up and running by:
1. using `zod` with primitives and objects
2. adapting `zod` quickly to existing projects thanks to automatic generators
3. changing the strategy frm type-first to schema-first
4. using error-throwing `parse` or non-error-throwing `safeParse` basing on your needs
5. applying `zod` to the most common usecase - validating API responses
6. handling errors the most convenient way (out of many!)

Take advantage of runtime validation with `zod`. Take advantage of the detailed lessons in this course 🔥

Effective Runtime Type Checks with Zod


Cursor can now automatically run commands in the terminal and walk step-by-step towards building out your entire project. You give it a goal, then it will suggest the commands you need to run and the files that you need to create and you can work with it to achieve what you're building. This lesson does a quick walkthough of using a Cursor Agent to build a project from scratch and guide it along the way. Cursor Agents definitely feel like a sneak peek at the future of programming!

Cursor Agents Initial Impressions - Allow an AI to Build Your Entire Project

Mock Service Worker is an API mocking library that allows you to write client-agnostic mocks and reuse them across any frameworks, tools, and environments.



Mocking WebSocket APIs with Mock Service Worker


While using anonymous functions might seem convenient, they can create difficulties when trying to identify performance bottlenecks during profiling. This lesson will demonstrate how named functions make it easier to pinpoint and address performance issues, ultimately leading to more efficient and debuggable code. Learning this practice will greatly improve your ability to locate and fix performance issues in complex projects.

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