Survey App Project for Flatiron

Introduction

Requirements

This was an exciting project as it pulled together all that I have been learning at Flatiron School over the last four months. I have come to appreciate the simplicity of setting up an API with Rails. The project requirements were as follows:

• Build a Single Page Application (SPA), with the frontend built with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript and a backend API with Ruby and Rails.
• Communication between the front and backend using asynchronously (AJAX) communication and JSON as the communication format.
• The JavaScript application must use Object Oriented JavaScript (classes) to encapsulate related data and behavior.
• The domain model served by the Rails backend must include a resource with at least one has-many relationship.
• The backend and frontend must collaborate to demonstrate Client-Server Communication. Your application should have at least 3 AJAX calls, covering at least 2 of Create, Read, Update, and Delete (CRUD). Your client-side JavaScript code must use fetch with the appropriate HTTP verb, and your Rails API should use RESTful conventions.

App Design

HTML - the footprint starts with a HTML file loosely based on HTML5 Boilerplate project, with a few of my own modification. I prefer to group the folder structure to separate concerns so, the source files are grouped into a src which includes separate folders for js, styling, and images. The compiled and minified files for production, are grouped into a 'dist' folder structure, again separated by js, styling, and images.

Styling - Most projects I have spun put pretty quickly and have relied on Component UI's to decrease the development time. I have used Bootstrap, and TailwindCSS in the past. This site is built with Bulma, which I love.

• SCSS Boilerplate I customized based on original work by Hugo Giraudel and his SASS_Boilerplate
• Styling is formatted, compiled, and minified using Gulp, and Browersync. The Gulp file is my tweaks to a Gulp-Boilerplate originally designed by Chris Ferdinandi
• The App allows users to create, delete, and complete (update) surveys, which then will display a running result (this is not the best design, as a admin account needs to added to handle delete, but this meets the requirements of the project). It has been very satisfy to code the styling for this project.

API - the API is changed with Ruby on Rails in API Mode utilizing a Postgres database. There are two database tables: 1) Surveys to save each survey list and three questions, and 2) an Answers table which saves the survey responses and the corresponding survey_id.

Fetch API

To set up the index page when I user visits the site, I used a simple GET request using the Fetch API. It is with this design I encountered a bug and an opportunity for learning. The following fetch call was at the head of the index.js file.

  fetch('http://localhost:3000/surveys')
    .then(res => res.json())
    .then(surveys => {
      surveys.forEach(survey => {
        const { id, title, question1, question2, question3 } = survey
        new Survey(id, title, question1, question2, question3)
      })
    })

When the user visited a single Survey page and clicked delete, the survey was in fact deleted, but it required a manual refresh to bring back the index display. I refactored the root fetch call:

function fetchSurveys() {
  fetch('http://localhost:3000/surveys')
    .then(res => res.json())
    .then(surveys => {
      surveys.forEach(survey => {
        const { id, title, question1, question2, question3 } = survey
        new Survey(id, title, question1, question2, question3)
      })
    })
}
fetchSurveys()

This refactor meant in the deleteSurvey method in the Survey class I could call this function to display the Surveys again:

async deleteSurvey() {
    await fetch(`http://localhost:3000/surveys/${ this.id }`, {
      method: 'DELETE'
    })
      .then(() => {
        document.getElementById('survey-container')
          .removeChild(document.getElementById(this.id))
      })
    fetchSurveys()
  }

Promise Pretty Please?

The next lesson I learned in this project was that a Promise is NOT the same as DATA. I struggled when I realized I could not really create a "global variable" to use throughout the project. I ended up utilizing JavaScript to Manipulate the Document Object Model to interject the results of the survey. I would love to abstract this code but it works:

getResults() {
    const fetchPromise = fetch('http://localhost:3000/answers')
    const resultsReport1 = document.getElementById('q1')
    const resultsReport2 = document.getElementById('q2')
    const resultsReport3 = document.getElementById('q3')
    fetchPromise.then(resp => {
      return resp.json()
    }).then(questionResults => {
      const myResults1 = questionResults.filter(a => a.surveys_id && a.responded === 'question1').length
      resultsReport1.innerHTML += myResults1
      const myResults2 = questionResults.filter(a => a.surveys_id && a.responded === 'question2').length
      resultsReport2.innerHTML += myResults2
      const myResults3 = questionResults.filter(a => a.surveys_id && a.responded === 'question3').length
      resultsReport3.innerHTML += myResults3
    })
  }

Which manipulates the DOM based on this template:

resultsHTML() {
    return `
    <div id="results-card">
      <h3>Results:</h3>
        <ul class="report-list">
          <li>${ this.question1 }: <span id="q1"></span></li>
          <li>${ this.question2 }: <span id="q2"></span></li>
          <li>${ this.question3 }: <span id="q3"></span></li>
        </ul>
     </div>
     <button class="card__btn done">Done</button>
    `
  }

Overall, this has been a great learning experience of a Single Page Application and there is plenty of room for future upgrades. Are you interested? Go look at the repo for future features.

Comments

[John K. Speck]

Awesome work, Chuck! I think you're going to love the ReactJS framework if you go that direction. It Really helps make the DOM manipulation stuff a bit more elegant.

[Chuck]

Thanks John.
My story: I started learning Gatsby and React last February with no JS experience. HARD! This inspired me, after years of WordPress experience, to decide to level up a 20 year hobby for coding and tech into a future career. I graduate from Flatiron in a month and start the job search with experience in Ruby, Sinatra, Rails, JavaScript and React. I have learned Nuxt as well in an attempt to level up that tool set. I see pluses and minuses in both frameworks and love learning. Thanks for your interest.

[John K. Speck]

That's inspiring, Chuck! I finished Flatiron January 3rd here in Brooklyn. It was a life-changing journey. My final project used a Rails Backend and the ReactJS framework for the frontend(actually pretty straightforward if someone helps you get "conditional rendering"). I was also able to add some data visualization using the Chart.js library and an interactive map component with Google React Maps component. I am happy to report that I spoke with a Real Live recruiter today and job prospects are in my near future. Good Luck with everything, Chuck! Flatiron is a great program. Feel free to keep in touch.