Learn Flexbox, Jest and Serverless

It's tempting to pick up a framework which has preselected flexbox or grid as the layout tool of choice, but it's important to learn when and why to use each method. This leads to slimmer stylesheets which results in better site performance, and less likelihood for "hacks" to make one method do what the other does inherently better. 

Throughout this collection, we will be progressively styling a responsive landing page template while building your knowledge on when to select grid or flexbox for any layout scenario. Spoiler alert: sometimes the best solution is using both!

The specification describes a CSS box model optimized for user interface design. In the flex layout model, the children of a flex container can be laid out in any direction, and can “flex” their sizes, either growing to fill unused space or shrinking to avoid overflowing the parent.

flexbox

Create a Landing Page with CSS Grid and Flexbox

Starting from a prebuilt frontend, Jason Lengstorf guides you through the creation of a "Corgi Up-boop App" that uses Netlify Functions and Hasura. You can view [the deployed final product on Netlify](https://egghead-serverless-functions.netlify.app/).

You'll set up the Netlify CLI, and configure a local development environment before writing and deploying functions with a few different use cases.

The first example function bypasses CORS restrictions to retrieve corgi data from an example third-party API.

Next, you'll configure environmental variables to securely communicate with the Unsplash API without exposing private keys to the client.

Serverless functions don't persist data by themselves, so we will use  Hasura to create a GraphQL API for tracking the number of "boops" each corgi receives.

This course is an excellent illustration of the speed of Serverless functions, and how fast you can implement functionality in your web applications.

An all-in-one workflow that combines global deployment, continuous integration, and automatic HTTPS.

netlify

Build a Corgi Up-boop Web App with Netlify Serverless Functions and Hasura

In this collection, we build a minimal flashcard application using React, primarily focusing on function components and the hooks API. To make sure we can understand and maintain existing code, there are also a few lessons toward the end that use class components so you can get familiar with the syntax. We cover important React concepts, and sprinkle in libraries that are pretty standard in the ecosystem like @reach/router, Jest, and React testing library. We start with create-react-app so we can get right into it without worrying about configuring tooling. There's [a separate course for that here](https://egghead.io/courses/modern-javascript-tooling-with-react?af=5mx0ie)

jest

Build a React App with the Hooks API

In this course we are going to work through properly setting up Enzyme with Jest to test rendered components. This includes the nitty gritty of making our testing environment work with various versions of React. After we get our environment setup ready, we’ll work through the different ways we can render a component within our test pages. With a rendered component we can now test component methods and properties to assert that they are what is intended. 

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

Test React Components with Enzyme and Jest

End-to-end testing assures you of a few things: that all the integrated pieces of an application properly function, all those pieces work together as expected, and your tests include and simulate real-user scenarios — something unit and integration tests just don't do.

This course introduces you to two great tools for E2E testing: 

* Puppeteer opens and runs applications in a Chromium browser and performs the actions it's given.
* Jest asserts that the integrated pieces work as expected and that add-on libraries like Faker and pixelmatch take our tests to the next level.

Over 9 lessons, we will create common application features and use Puppeteer and Jest to run different types of tests against them. You'll get practice using these tools to render content, mimic user activity, automate tests, and measure the overall performance of your application.

End to End Testing with Google's Puppeteer and Jest

Flexbox is a powerful way to layout HTML so that elements can grow to fit the size of their container.  It can also control how the elements are positioned within a flexed container.  

Once you start thinking in `rows` and `columns`, you can control almost any flexed layout with just a few simple flexbox layout primitives.

Get Started with Flexbox CSS Layouts

This playlist covers various aspects of CSS including different rules, selectors, and patterns

CSS Tips and Tricks

Flexbox is a wonderful tool built into the CSS specification. Using flexbox doesn't require any special framework or library, just a browser with CSS3 support. It is so awesome, and makes the arranging elements on a page almost fun!

Flexbox Fundamentals

Create a serverless application and deploy it in under thirty minutes!

We'll be using Netlify, Vite, TypeScript, and React in our project. This stack synergizes extremely well for rapidly developing professional-quality applications. 

If you haven't heard of Vite, it's the French word for quick! It's also a build tool that consists of a dev-server and an extremely fast bundler. It makes for a rapid development loop.

As for the rest. Netlify makes hosting fast and easy with serverless functions and continuous deployment. React enables you to quickly create reusable components. And TypeScript helps you write cleaner code that is easier to refactor. 

So get started and learn how to use this stack in your own applications!

Create a TypeScript powered serverless React application

Best practices for building & testing redux applications have changed dramatically over time. This course aims to be a comprehensive and up-to-date resource for those seeking to confidently test their redux apps. Whether you're just getting started or want to improve on your existing testing strategy, there will be something in this course for you.

This first few lessons of this course look at how to add jest to an existing react/redux application that was built on top of [vite](https://vitejs.dev/). We cover basic functionality like using `npm test` vs `npx jest` and generating and using [code coverage](https://jestjs.io/docs/cli#--coverageboolean) to inform our testing strategy.

The next 10 or so lessons cover the specifics of unit testing the redux code in our application. We'll go over how to test reducers, selectors and thunks. As part of this we'll touch on mocking APIs and using [Redux Mock Store](https://github.com/reduxjs/redux-mock-store) as well as running actions through our applications' actual reducers to broaden our test coverage.

In the final part of this course we'll look at how we can test our redux connected react components using the various utilities that come with the [React Testing Library](https://testing-library.com/docs/react-testing-library/intro/). We'll cover simulating various kinds of user input with the [User Event Module](https://testing-library.com/docs/ecosystem-user-event), populating our redux store with test data, using [jest spies](https://jestjs.io/docs/jest-object#jestspyonobject-methodname), how to wait for asynchronous tasks to complete, and several approaches for finding & asserting that visual elements exist on the page.

This course is built on top of content that was created for the [Modern Redux with RTK and TypeScript](https://app.egghead.io/playlists/modern-redux-with-redux-toolkit-rtk-and-typescript-64f243c8) course and I highly recommend you start there if you haven't completed it already. It does expect a *basic* familiarity with react, redux and jest. TypeScript is used in these lessons, but is not a major focus and hopefully won't distract you too much if you prefer plain JavaScript.

No matter your experience level with redux and testing react applications, I'm confident your abilities will level up as you watch this course and follow along with the examples.

Thank you!

Confidently Testing Redux Applications with Jest & TypeScript

Here are all the Egghead.io lessons about testing with Jest! http://facebook.github.io/jest (https://kcd.im/egghead-jest)

Testing JavaScript with Jest

Demystifying alignment in flexbox children

Flexbox makes it easier to create layouts that can adjust depending on the content that is added and the space available. In this lesson we look at a couple real-world applications of Flexbox in an application and website.

Using Flexbox in Websites and Applications

The flex-basis property allows us to define the dimension (along the flex-direction axis) that a flexbox child should ideally have.

Defining dimensions on flexbox children using flex-basis

Flex-basis lets us set the ideal dimensions for a flexbox child, but flex-shrink lets us define what should happen if there isn't enough room, and flex-grow can define what happens when there is too much room.

Using flex-shrink and flex-grow to make flexbox children resize correctly

Using the `order` property we alter the order in which flexbox children appear on the page, without making changes to the dom.

Using order to rearrange flexbox children

The flex shorthand makes it easier to declare flex-shrink, flex-grow, and flex-basis, but it sometimes has unexpected results because the defaults differ.

Combining the flexbox sizing properties using the flex shorthand

The Flexbox css spec allows for more adjustable layouts. The `flex-direction` property allows you to easily change the layout on the children of an element without making any changes to the dom, which is particularly useful when combined with media queries.

Using flex-direction to layout content horizontally and vertically

Adding flex-wrap to a flexbox container allows the items to form a grid. The content can then be aligned and distributed along the grid using justify-content and align-content.

Turning a flexbox into a grid using flex-wrap and align-content

React Native lets you build mobile apps using only JavaScript. It uses the same design as React, letting you compose a rich mobile UI from declarative components.

react-native

React Native utilizes flexbox for layout, and you can apply styles inline, or via external stylesheets. We will learn about both approaches, and create some basic styles for a native application.

For getting your application setup, you might want to checkout [this lesson](https://egghead.io/lessons/react-react-native-up-and-running?course=react-native-fundamentals&from=react-applying-styles-in-react-native)

Applying Basic Styles in React Native

Let's learn how to unit test your JavaScript with [Jest](http://facebook.github.io/jest), a JavaScript unit testing framework from Facebook. We'll install and optimize Jest for this project and see how quick and easy it is to get things going with Jest.