Van Life, a React project built as part of Scrimba's Advanced React course.

I was very excited to start this project for two reasons: React Router and Firebase/Firestore. I had not used them previously in any other project, and are considered two important tools for creating a single-page application with backend features.

Here is how I used them for this project:

React Router
To manage different pages I used the following components:

1. BrowserRouter and Routes to provide the routing structure for the entire app.

2. Route to map different components to different URLs.

3. Link and NavLink to create navigable links to different parts of the app.

4. Outlet as as a placeholder for nested routes.

5. useLocation to get the previous location from the location state, so the user can be redirected back to that location after they log in.

6. useParams to allow components to access the URL parameters.

7. useNavigate to change the route after a form submission. useNavigate returns a function that can be used to navigate programmatically. In the Login component, useNavigate is used to redirect the user to their previous location (or the "/host" page if there was no previous location) after they successfully log in.

8. useSearchParams to allow the application to read and modify the URL query. This custom hook returns an array that contains an instance of URLSearchParams (which contains the current URL parameters) and a function to update those parameters. In the Vans component, useSearchParams is used to get and set the URL parameters, which are used to filter the list of vans by type.

Firebase and Firestore

Firestore is a NoSQL cloud database provided by Firebase to store and sync data for client- and server-side development. For this application, I used Firestore to store and retrieve data about vans and hosts.

1. initializeApp function used to initialize and return a Firebase app instance, which I then used to interact with Firebase services.

2. getFirestore function gets the Firestore service for the given Firebase app.

3. collection, doc, getDocs, getDoc, query, where: these functions are that I used for querying and managing data in the Firestore database. I used them to read and write documents, collections, and create queries.

A few tools that I was already familiar with:

React Hooks: to manage state and effects I used the following

• useState: to manage various pieces of state, such as the list of vans (vans, setVans), the current status of data fetching (loading, setLoading), and any errors that occur during fetching (error, setError).

• useEffect: to fetch the list of vans when the component mounts

Local Storage to persist login status across browser sessions.

PLEASE NOTE: I built this project with a desktop-first approach and is not yet responsive to smaller screens. It is also missing critical a11y features. I plan to reconfigure and rebuild the entire application in order remove reduntant functionalities and add Firebase authentification. With that opportunity I will also take care of a11y and responsiveness.