Game of Thrones Data Base on React

A single page application for the Game of Thrones universe written in React and using asynchronous api requests.

Contents

• Game of Thrones Data Base on React
  • Contents
  • Experience 🎓
  • Demo 🎥
  • How to Use 🔧
    • Prerequisites 📋
    • Running 🚀
  • Features and structure 📓
    • Features
      • Create React App
      • Styled components
      • Using an API
      • The Component Lifecycle
      • React Router
      • React Patterns
    • Structure

Experience 🎓

In this project, I study and practice the following things:

• Fetch / Async / Await;
• Asynchronous API requests (An API of Ice and Fire);
• Connecting a custom third party spinner;
• Regular Expressions;
• Lifecycle Methods;
• Error Boundaries and Error Handling;
• React Patterns;
• React children;
• React Router;
• Default props;
• Higher Order Components;
• Hooks.

Demo 🎥

The completed project can be viewed here

How to Use 🔧

These instructions will get you a copy of the project up and running on your local machine for development and testing purposes.

Prerequisites 📋

You'll need Git and Node.js (which comes with NPM) installed on your computer. Also, you can use Yarn instead of NPM ☝️

Running 🚀

From your command line, first clone "game-of-thrones-spa":

# Clone this repository
$ git clone https://github.com/rimerian/game-of-thrones-spa.git

# Go into the repository
$ cd game-of-thrones-spa

# Remove current origin repository
$ git remote remove origin

Then you can install the dependencies either using NPM or Yarn:

Using NPM:

# Install dependencies
$ npm install

# Start development server
$ npm start

Using Yarn:

# Install dependencies
$ yarn

# Start development server
$ yarn start

NOTE: If your run into issues installing the dependencies with NPM, use this command:

# Install dependencies with all permissions
$ sudo npm install --unsafe-perm=true --allow-root

Once your server has started, go to this url http://localhost:3000/game-of-thrones-spa and you will see the website running on a Development Server:

Features and structure 📓

Features

Create React App

This project was bootstrapped with Create React App.

It sets up development environment so that you can use the latest JavaScript features, provides a nice developer experience, and optimizes app for production.

Create React App doesn’t handle backend logic or databases; it just creates a frontend build pipeline, so you can use it with any backend you want. Under the hood, it uses Babel and Webpack.

Styled components

The project uses Styled components, which allows you to style each individual module and element directly from the corresponding JS.

//Exmple of usage styled components
...
import styled from 'styled-components';
...
const HeaderTitle = styled.div`
    font-size: 24px;
    color: #fff;
    margin: 0;
`;
...
const Header = () => {
    return (
        <HeaderBlock>
            <HeaderTitle>
                <Link to='/'>
                    Game of Thrones DB
                </Link>
            </HeaderTitle>
            ...
        </HeaderBlock>
    );
};
export default Header;

Using an API

The data comes to the project via asynchronous requests to the Ice and Fire API. The application requests the following resources from the API:

• Characters;
• Houses;
• Books.

To process the requested data, a gotService module is written that converts them to the format required for the SPA.

The Component Lifecycle

The project uses some lifecycle methods for flexible rendering of application elements:

• componentDidMount() Method are called when an instance of a component is being created and inserted into the DOM;
• componentDidUpdate Method are called when a component is being re-rendered;
• componentWillUnmount() Method is called when a component is being removed from the DOM;
• componentDidCatch() Method are called when there is an error during rendering, in a lifecycle method, or in the constructor of any child component.

React Router

React Router is a declarative library for creating a page navigation simulation within a SPA.

Router creates a history object, which it uses to keep track of the current location and re-render the website whenever that changes.

// Using React router in a project
import {BrowserRouter as Router, Route} from 'react-router-dom';
...
<Router
  basename="/game-of-thrones-spa">
  <div className="app">    
    <Container>
      ...
      <Route path='/characters' component={CharacterPage}/>            
      <Route path='/houses' component={HousesPage}/>
      <Route path='/books' exact component={BooksPage}/>
      <Route path='/books/:id' render={
        ({match}) => {
          const {id} = match.params;
        return <BooksItem bookId={id} />}
      }/>
    </Container>
  </div>
</Router>

React Patterns

To avoid code repetition, the application components have been improved using various "React patterns":

• Stateless function
• Destructuring Arguments
• Render callback
• Proxy component
• Layout component
• Container component
• Higher-order component

Structure

The project has a modular structure of the React application. The "camelCase" style is selected for naming the project files. The main part of the application is located in the src directory. The application is divided into components:

• app
• errorMessage
• header
• itemDetails
• itemList
• pages
  • booksItem.js
  • booksPage.js
  • characterPage.js
  • housesPage.js
• randomChar
• rowBlock
• spinner

Each component has, in addition to the main file, a style file in css format and an index.js for convenience when exporting.

Receiving and Processing data from the API is assigned to the gotService.js module in the services folder.

All components are assembled in the app, and then imported into the main index.js and there they are rendered to the web page (index.html inside public folder).