 Resources from Jason Lengstorf in 2021

JavaScript® (often shortened to JS) is a lightweight, interpreted, object-oriented language with first-class functions, most known as the scripting language for Web pages, but used in many non-browser environments as well such as node.js or Apache CouchDB. It is a prototype-based, multi-paradigm scripting language that is dynamic, and supports object-oriented, imperative, and functional programming styles.

javascript

Serverless functions allow us to build secure e-commerce flows into our sites, even without servers! Learn how to use [Netlify Functions](https://www.netlify.com/products/functions/?utm_source=egghead&utm_medium=stripe-products-jl&utm_campaign=devex) to securely create [Stripe Checkout](https://stripe.com/payments/checkout) sessions, which allows us to quickly set up full-featured e-commerce on Jamstack sites.

Use serverless functions to handle the Stripe Checkout flow on Jamstack sites

Bite-size video tutorials for badass web developers.

egghead

Learn how to add a secure donation payment flow to your website with Stripe Checkout. This can be used on any site and with any framework!

Add a Donation Button to a Website Using Stripe

Set up a new site on Netlify to deploy from GitHub automatically when you make changes.

Deploy a Site to Netlify From Git

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

netlify

Netlify makes developing serverless functions easy with the netlify-cli (`ntl` for short). You'll be able to build and test functions locally as well as publish your functions from the CLI. 

We will install netlify-cli globally and create a `netlify.toml` file that will configure where the CLI should look to run functions that we define, in our case `functions/`. When the application is served up, Netlify runs functions under `/.netlify/functions/`.

Set up a Local Development Environment for Serverless Functions Using Netlify

There are a few ways you can run Netlify serverless functions while you are developing them. 

You can: 

- Navigate to the directory under the `/.netlify/functions/` path
- Curl them using the full URL
- Use an app like Postman

Manually Trigger Netlify Serverless Functions Locally

A serverless function is something that is going to allow us to do server-like things without having to manage servers, but an important distinction here is that serverless does not mean that there are **no** servers. 

The environment is actually running on top of an operating system and uses physical servers, but the responsibility for provisioning and managing the infrastructure belongs entirely to the service provider.

Some of the benefits of using serverless functions: 

- **Enhanced scalability.** No need for developers to implement code to scale. It scales automatically.
- **Reduced time to market.** Serverless is an optimized set of tools for building quickly.
- **No boiler code.** A serverless function is just a tiny piece of logic. Reducing the complexity of software.
- **More time for user experience.** Serverless functions allow teams to focus resources on the user experience and not on managing servers.
- **Security.** We can call third-party APIs securely without exposing important data on the client-side.

What Are Serverless Functions?

In this talk, we’ll break down the very real risks of idolizing individual contributors, dig into the nugget of truth that keeps this stereotype alive, and dive into what a real “10× developer” might look like.

What If The Real 10X Developer Is The Friends We Made Along The Way?

Clone the course repository at: [https://github.com/learnwithjason/serverless-functions](https://github.com/learnwithjason/serverless-functions). In the repo, you'll want to start with the `start` branch. 

Preact is a JavaScript library that describes itself as a fast 3kB alternative to React with the same ES6 API. This is not a course on Preact. For this course, we'll be adding serverless functionality to a predefined Preact application in your local development environment. The Preact app contains static HTML and hardcoded data to get us started quickly.

To run this application in your local development, execute the following command: `npm run dev.` That will open `localhost:5000`. You can interact with this application, but for the moment, the data is not persistent.


Set up a Preact Project in a Local Development Environment

Netlify makes deploying to production a breeze by configuring your Netlify CLI to your Netlify account and integrating with GitHub.

We'll log in to Netlify through the CLI and initialize a site by completing all the options that the CLI runs us through. Once this is done, Netlify will trigger new builds for your site every time you push to GitHub.

Deploy Serverless Functions to Production on Netlify using the Netlify CLI

CORS limits websites from communicating with other domains without the full consent of both sites. Consuming data from a 3rd Party REST API makes it difficult since we can't properly configure the appropriate CORS headers. To solve this, we'll set up a proxy server to request the data using a Netlify function that avoids CORS altogether.

The Third-Party API that we'll be working with will provide the following data: `id`, `name`, `favoriteSong` for each corgi. 

[http://no-cors-api.netlify.app/api/corgis](http://no-cors-api.netlify.app/api/corgis)

We will also use `node-fetch` a light-weight module that brings the `fetch` API to fetch the data into our application.

Circumvent CORS when Accessing a Third-Party API using Netlify Functions 

Environment variables set in a `.env` file can be imported using the Netlify CLI with the following command: `netlify env:import`.

This allows you to manage environment variables directly on Netlify, providing the benefit of security and flexibility of sharing environment variables with your team. 

From inside Netlify, you can access the environment variables in:

`Site settings` > `Build & deploy` > `Environment` > `Environment variables`

Import and Set Environment Variables from a .env file using Netlify CLI

We'll a single set of data using a serverless function and multiple APIs. We already have our API for pulling the corgi's data, the next step is getting the images from Unsplash using the Unsplash API. 

To access the Unsplash API, create an account. Once your account has been registered for the API, go to your apps. Click “New Application”, and fill in the required details. To use the API you must abide by the terms and follow the API guidelines. 

The API is available at [https://api.unsplash.com/](https://api.unsplash.com/). Responses are sent as JSON.

The collection we'll be loading is available at [api.unsplash.com/collections/48405776/photos](http://api.unsplash.com/collections/48405776/photos) You'll need your own API key!

Serverless functions help us comply with the terms and API guidelines by protecting API keys and making secure calls to 3rd Party APIs.

Load Data Using Secure API Keys from a Third-Party API with Netlify Serverless Functions

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

postgres

We'll store client interaction using Hasura as our primary database. Hasura allows you to build a powerful, secure & flexible GraphQL API that can query data in your databases, HTTP services, serverless functions, as well as third party APIs. 

We'll start by creating a Hasura Cloud account. Proceed to create a Postgres database on Heroku. If you don’t have an account on Heroku, you need to sign up on Heroku. You won’t need a credit card. 

We'll add corgi data to the database using the Unsplash `ID` as our primary key, and `count` as an integer for our count functionality.

Create a Database using Hasura Cloud and a Postgres Instance to Store Data

We'll create a helper function to send GraphQL requests to Hasura from our serverless 
functions using `node-fetch` and passing the `X-Hasura-Admin-Secret` in the header of the request. 

Hasura is configured with an admin password that we set in the previous lesson. When making an API request the client passes the admin password in the header `X-Hasura-Admin-Secret`. Then Hasura validates the admin secret and allows access to *all* resources.

The secret is called `admin-secret` since the `admin` ****role is used to execute the request i.e the caller will have permissions to create/update/delete/view any data that is there.

Send GraphQL Requests to Hasura from Netlify Serverless Functions using node-fetch

We'll load existing data from our Hasura database using serverless functions. The first step will be to create a new mutation in the Hasura GraphiQL named  `InserOrUpdateBoops.`

We need to make sure that all the corgis are being loaded into our database. Once they are loaded, we can set the count to zero. We do this by defining a GraphQL mutation using an autogenerated variable provided by Hasura called, `boops_insert_input!`. 

Our application loads the existing data but the functionality to save the values from the client-side is still not available.

Load Existing Data from a Hasura Database using Netlify Serverless Functions

We'll update our boops count by utilizing the `update_boops_by_pk`, an auto-generated query provided by Hasura. 

We'll create a new serverless function called `add-boop.js` that takes events and arguments provided by the `UpdateBoopCount` mutation. 

We can increment and store the boop count by making a request with the `handleBoop` function.

As UX improvements, the button is disabled and enabled when the increment boop function is being called. The button text updates to match the current state.

Update Data in Database Triggered by Client Interactions with Netlify Serverless Functions

In this course, we've built and deployed a serverless application that loads data, combines data, uses environment variables safely, protects API keys, works around CORS, and utilizes data from a database. We additionally, deployed our application using Netlify's continuous deployment process. 

With continuous deployment, Netlify will automatically deploy new versions of our site when pushing commits to the connected Git repository. This also facilitates features like Deploy Previews, branch deploys, and split testing.

The live website to the course project can be found here: https://suspicious-banach-da7b44.netlify.app/

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