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New GraphQL Meetup Online with Moon Highway Will Have You Over the Moon!

Published Mar 17, 2020

Updated Feb 14, 2023

1 min read

This article was written over 18 months ago and may contain information that is out of date. Some content may be relevant but please refer to the relevant official documentation or available resources for the latest information.

What would a This Dot Media announcement be without a quick dad joke?

But in all seriousness, we are so excited to announce This Dot Media’s new partnership with Moon Highway to present a GraphQL Meetup Online. This hour-long, Meetup will join ranks with three other monthly, technology-specific meetings (Angular, React, & Vue) that This Dot hosts every Thursday.

We are especially thrilled to bring the community this free resource in cooperation with Moon Highway, a Northern California based training and curriculum development company, whose founders and operators, Eve Porcello and Alex Banks, will be the Meetup's first featured speakers.

This event will be a unique opportunity to hear talks worthy of top dollar conferences, and ask questions directly to our speakers, all for the rock bottom price of $0! All we ask is that you bring a curious mind, and a few friends if you can!

The first meeting of our GraphQL Meetup Online will be held on April 7th, 2020 at 12:30PM (PDT)/ 3:30 PM (EDT)! If you have any questions, feel free to tweet @ThisDotMedia, or contact us at hi@thisdot.co.

This Dot is a consultancy dedicated to guiding companies through their modernization and digital transformation journeys. Specializing in replatforming, modernizing, and launching new initiatives, we stand out by taking true ownership of your engineering projects.

We love helping teams with projects that have missed their deadlines or helping keep your strategic digital initiatives on course. Check out our case studies and our clients that trust us with their engineering.

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This Dot

Class and Enum Typings for Handling Data with GraphQL

Intro Today we’ll talk about class and enum typings for handling more complex data with GraphQL. The typings will be used on class objects to make them easier to read and understand. This blog will build on the concepts of another blog found here, in which I discussed wrapping and enhancing data, which talks about how to create a GraphQL Rest API wrapper, and how to enhance your data. This article assumes you have a basic understanding of classes, typing, and enums. Here is the code repo if you want to review it while reading, or just skip ahead. With that said, we will look at the class structure we’re going to be using, the enums, and the type lookup for our customField enum with our mapper. Class setup This class we’re going to set up will be strictly for typing. We’re going to make a RestaurantGuest class as this data will be restaurant themed. So in our restaurant.ts file, we will name it RestaurantGuest, and include a few different items. *Basic starting class example* ` After setting that up, we will add a type that will reference the above class. *Type example* ` This type will be used later when we do the type lookup in conjunction with our mapper function. With the above finished, we can now move on to handling our enums. Handling enums We’ll now create our Enum to make dealing with our complex data easier. Since the above 3249258 represents FoodReservation, we will create an enum for it. Now you might be wondering why 3249258 represents FoodReservation. Unfortunately, this is an example of how data can be returned to us from a call. It could be due to the field id established in a CMS such as Contentful, or from another source that we don’t control. This isn’t readable, so we’re creating an Enum for the value. *Enum example* ` This will be used later during our type look-up. Type lookup Now we can start combining the enum from above with our class type, and a look-up type that we’re about to create. So let's make another type called RestaurantGuestFieldLookup, which will have an id and value. *Look-up type example* ` Perfect, now we’ll swap out ` to be ` We can now move on to creating and using our mapper. In a separate file called mapper.ts, we will create our restaruantGuestMapper function. ` Tada! Thanks to all the work above, we can easily understand and get back the data we need. Conclusion Today's article covered setting up a typing class, creating an enum, and type lookup with a mapper for more complex data handling with GraphQL. Hopefully, the class structure was straightforward and helpful, along with the enums and type lookup and formatting examples. If you want to learn more about GraphQL, read up on our resources available at graphql.framework.dev....

May 26, 2023

2 mins

GraphQL

Introducing the New Serverless, GraphQL, Apollo Server, and Contentful Starter kit

Introducing the new Serverless, GraphQL, Apollo Server, and Contentful Starter kit The team at This Dot Labs has released a brand new starter kit which includes the Serverless Framework, GraphQL, Apollo Server and Contentful configured and ready to go. This article will walk through how to set up the new kit, the key technologies used, and reasons why you would consider using this kit. Table of Contents - How to get started setting up the kit - Generate the project - Setup Contentful access - Setting up Docker - Starting the local server - How to Create the Technology Model in Contentful - How to seed the database with demo data - How to work with the migration scripts - Technologies included in this starter kit - Why use GraphQL? - Why use Contentful? - Why use Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS)? - Why use Apollo Server? - Why use the Serverless Framework? - Why use Redis? - Why use the Jest testing framework? - Project structure - How to deploy your application - What can this starter kit be used for? - Conclusion How to get started setting up the kit Generate the project In the command line, you will need to start the starter.dev CLI by running the npx @this-dot/create-starter command. You can then select the Serverless Framework, Apollo Server, and Contentful CMS kit and name your new project. Then you will need to cd into your new project directory and install the dependencies using the tool of your choice (npm, yarn, or pnpm). Next, you will need to Run cp .env.example .env to copy the contents of the .env.example file into the .env file. Setup Contentful access You will first need to create an account on Contentful, if you don't have one already. Once you are logged in, you will need to create a new space. From there, go to Settings -> API keys and click on the Content Management Tokens tab. Next, click on the Generate personal token button and give your token a name. Copy your new Personal Access Token, and add it to the CONTENTFUL_CONTENT_MANAGEMENT_API_TOKEN variable. Then, go to Settings -> General settings to get the CONTENTFUL_SPACE_ID. The last step is to add those CONTENTFUL_CONTENT_MANAGEMENT_API_TOKEN and CONTENTFUL_SPACE_ID values to your .env file. Setting up Docker You will first need to install Docker Desktop if you don't have it installed already. Once installed, you can start up the Docker container with the npm run infrastructure:up command. Starting the local server While the Docker container is running, open up a new tab in the terminal and run npm run dev to start the development server. Open your browser to http://localhost:3000/dev/graphql to open up Apollo server. How to Create the Technology Model in Contentful To get started with the example model, you will first need to create the model in Contentful. 1. Log into your Contentful account 2. Click on the Content Model tab 3. Click on the Design your Content Modal button if this is your first modal 4. Create a new model called Technology 5. Add three new text fields called displayName, description and url 6. Save your new model How to seed the database with demo data This starter kit comes with a seeding script that pre-populates data for the Technology Content type. In the command line, run npm run db:seed which will add three new data entries into Contentful. If you want to see the results from seeding the database, you can execute a small GraphQL query using Apollo server. First, make sure Docker, and the local server(npm run dev) are running, and then navigate to http://localhost:3000/dev/graphql. Add the following query: ` When you run the query, you should see the following output. ` How to work with the migration scripts Migrations are a way to make changes to your content models and entries. This starter kit comes with a couple of migration scripts that you can study and run to make changes to the demo Technology model. These migration scripts are located in the scripts/migration directory. To get started, you will need to first install the contentful-cli. ` You can then login to Contentful using the contentful-cli. ` You will then need to choose the Contentful space where the Technology model is located. ` If you want to modify the existing demo content type, you can run the second migration script from the starter kit. ` If you want to build out more content models using the CLI, you can study the example code in the /scripts/migrations/01-create-technology-contentType.js file. From there, you can create a new migration file, and run the above contentful space migration command. If you want to learn more about migration in Contentful, then please check out the documentation. Technologies included in this starter kit Why use GraphQL? GraphQL is a query language for your API and it makes it easy to query all of the data you need in a single request. This starter kit uses GraphQL to query the data from our Contentful space. Why use Contentful? Contentful is a headless CMS that makes it easy to create and manage structured data. We have integrated Contentful into this starter kit to make it easy for you to create new entries in the database. Why use Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS)? Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS) is a queuing service that allows you to decouple your components and process and store messages in a scalable way. In this starter kit, an SQS message is sent by the APIGatewayProxyHandler using the sendMessage function, which is then stored in a queue called DemoJobQueue. The SQS handler sqs-handler polls this queue, and processes any message received. ` Why use Apollo Server? Apollo Server is a production-ready GraphQL server that works with any GraphQL client, and data source. When you run npm run dev and open the browser to http://localhost:3000/dev/graphql, you will be able to start querying your Contentful data in no time. Why use the Serverless Framework? The Serverless Framework is used to help auto-scale your application by using AWS Lambda functions. In the starter kit, you will find a serverless.yml file, which acts as a configuration for the CLI and allows you to deploy your code to your chosen provider. This starter kit also includes the following plugins: - serverless-offline - allows us to deploy our application locally to speed up development cycles. - serverless-plugin-typescript - allows the use of TypeScript with zero-config. - serverless-dotenv-plugin - preloads function environment variables into the Serverless Framework. Why use Redis? Redis is an open-source in-memory data store that stores data in the server memory. This starter kit uses Redis to cache the data to reduce the API response times and rate limiting. When you make a new request, those new requests will be retrieved from the Redis cache. Why use the Jest testing framework? Jest is a popular testing framework that works well for creating unit tests. You can see some example test files under the src/schema/technology directory. You can use the npm run test command to run all of the tests. Project structure Inside the src directory, you will find the following structure: ` This given structure makes it easy to find all of the code and tests related to that specific component. This structure also follows the single responsibility principle which means that each file has a single purpose. How to deploy your application The Serverless Framework needs access to your cloud provider account so that it can create and manage resources on your behalf. You can follow the guide to get started. Steps to get started: 1. Sign up for an AWS account 2. Create an IAM User and Access Key 3. Export your AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID & AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY credentials. ` 4. Deploy your application on AWS Lambda: ` 5. To deploy a single function, run: ` To stop your Serverless application, run: ` For more information on Serverless deployment, check out this article. What can this starter kit be used for? This starter kit is very versatile, and can be used with a front-end application for a variety of situations. Here are some examples: - personal developer blog - small e-commerce application Conclusion In this article, we looked at how we can get started using the Serverless, GraphQL, Apollo Server, and Contentful Starter kit. We also looked at the different technologies used in the kit, and why they were chosen. Lastly, we looked at how to deploy our application using AWS. I hope you enjoy working with our new starter kit!...

Jun 2, 2023

7 mins

GraphQL

A Breakdown of RxJS 7.0 Performance Improvements

It’s official. RxJS 7.0 has been deemed stable and is now available in its beta form. The core team, committed to maintaining a dependable and adaptable reactive programming tool, has built this new release to improve many aspects of developer experience without triggering changing breaks to existing code. Through a partnership with Google, the RxJS core team was able to test its latest release by integrating the library into the Google 3 monorepository. In doing so, they ran RxJs against thousands of build targets, and across countless applications, to identify where code breaks were happening, and what could be done to ensure stronger stability. Updated Typing RxJS 7.0 is written in Typescript 3.8, which allows users to leverage all of Typescript’s latest features. For example, RxJS’ typing inference capacity, especially with respect to how the library handles generics, has significantly improved. Previous versions struggled to type larger rests of arguments, with prior upper bound limits not usually exceeding 8 or 9 values. These limitations, however, have been removed, allowing developers to pass an infinite number of values with one call. The team was also able to fix many antiquated types that did not reflect the runtime behavior of actual APIs. As a result, several Observables, including *'toPromise()'*, have been deprecated in order to mitigate the challenges of legacy behavior without significantly impacting existing code. New Features animationFrames(): an Observable that returns the milliseconds elapsed since the start of the Observable, which is especially useful for coding animation, and replaces previous methods of incrementing numbers. lastValueFrom() and firstValueFrom(): Observables that return the last and first values in a promise, respectfully. They improve upon *‘toPromise()’* by returning an ‘EmptyError’ when passing promises without values, and giving users more flexibility when selecting the values they want returned. AsyncIterable support: Any areas of code that previously accepted a Promise, or an Observable, now also accept AsyncIterables. rxjs-for-await: a separate library which supports async-await for-await loops via AsyncIterables. *'retry({resetOnSuccess: true})'*: In 6.0, if you had a source that errored with, for example, a retry count valued at 5, it would only error a total of 5 times, no matter how many successful messages it had passed. With *'retry({resetOnSuccess: true})'*, the retry count value will reset every time a successful message is passed. TimeStamp: an interface with a *‘now()’* method that returns a number. Name Changes: In order to create fewer collisions between four legacy operators, and creation methods with the same name... *'zip(other$)'* is now *'zipWith(other$)'*. *'combineLatest(a$, b$)'* is now *'combineLatestWith(a$, b$)'*. *'merge(partner$)'* is now 'mergeWith(partner$)'. *'concat(ender$)'* is now *'concatWith(ender$)'*. Deprecations In 7.0, no critical elements have been removed from the library, but several features have been deprecated. These include: ResultSelectors, which have been deprecated since 5.0. The process of passing scheduler arguments through functions such as ‘of()’ or ‘range()’ has been deprecated, and should be replaced by using ‘scheduled()’ or ‘observeOn()’. This has been done in order to remove scheduling logic from operators that don’t need it. Some subscription signatures will be deprecated. With this newest release, subscriptions should only be called with a single function, or a partial or complete Observable. The same will also go for tap signatures. This will simplify the development process and help eventually make the library more lean with future releases. Functions that pull in schedulers are now deprecated as of this release in order to prepare users for the eventual phase-out of passing schedulers to certain functions. Looking Forward to 7.1 and Beyond In order to support future changes to the library, the RxJS team will begin introducing ESLint transformations. These updates will help developers remove deprecated code, such as APIs, from their applications, and prepare users for future, major releases as the library becomes faster and leaner. However, Ben Lesh, RxJS core team lead, ensures that no breaking changes will be scheduled until version 9.0 at the earliest. How You Can Contribute The RxJS core team welcomes enthusiastic RxJS experts to help contribute to refining version 7’s future updates. Those experienced with ESLint transformations, or who want to update documentation are welcome to contribute to this open-source library. And of course, the RxJS team relies on the amazing work of authors, bloggers, content creators, and those working in developer relations, to share insights into the library with the development community. If you’re just getting started with RxJS, check out this fantastic “1 Hour to Learn RxJS” tutorial by Ben Lesh from This Dot Labs' Javascript Marathon, where you can learn about Observables and operators, including how to build an Observable from scratch!...

Jul 31, 2020

4 mins

RxJS

Building a Stripe App: A Step-by-Step Guide to QR Code Generation

Building a Stripe App: A Step-by-Step Guide to QR Code Generation Why Build a Stripe App? I recently participated in an audio space with the Stripe team, and something they said really stuck with me: the Stripe app store is a growing area that isn't overly saturated yet. There's a lot of potential for new apps, and companies can use this opportunity to grow. I work at a company called This Dot Labs, and we've created several Stripe apps and even own one. After looking at the data, I can confirm that the Stripe team was right! Creating a QR Code Generator App For this tutorial, we'll build a QR code app that can take a URL and generate a code for it. This is a good use case to help you understand the ins and outs of Stripe's developer tools. Why QR Codes? QR codes are useful tools that have become common in e-commerce, restaurants, and other industries. While Stripe already has a QR code tool, we'll make our own to familiarize ourselves with their syntax and problem-solving approaches. Project Structure Before we dive into the implementation, let's look at the structure of our Stripe App QR Code project: * .vscode: Contains settings for Visual Studio Code * source/views: Holds the main application views * .gitignore: Specifies files to ignore in version control * stripe-app.json: Defines the Stripe app configuration * ui-extensions.d.ts: TypeScript declaration file for UI extensions * .build: this is where the built Stripe app gets placed. Step-by-Step Implementation 1\. Install Stripe Locally First, you need to install Stripe on your local machine. The documentation provides great instructions for this: * For Mac users: Use Brew to install * For Windows users: Download the package and add it to your environment variables You can find the details here in the stripe docs to install the Stripe CLI https://docs.stripe.com/stripe-cli When using Windows, you must do stripe login from Powershell, NOT from Git bash or any other tool. After the server is up, then you can continue using git bash for everything else. After stripe login, you need to enter stripe apps start. Once you do that, the server is up and running and you can go back to using git bash or any other tool. 2\. Install Dependencies We'll be using an extra package for QR code generation. Install it using npm: ` 3\. Set Up the Main Component Let's look at the home.tsx file, where we'll use Stripe's UI components: ` These components are similar to other UI libraries like Bootstrap or Tailwind CSS. 4\. Create the UI Structure Our app will have: * An input field for the URL * Validation using a regex pattern * Error handling for invalid URLs * QR code generation and display Here is the Home.tsx file that is located in the src/views folder ` * ContextView` is at the top level of the app where we see the Title and the link to the Stripe Docs that we placed in our Context View. * Box is how you use Divs. * Banners can be used to show notification errors or any other item you wish to display. * Textfields are input fields. * Everything else is pretty self-explanatory. 5\. Handle Content Security Policy One problem I personally ran into was when I tried to redirect users, the Stripe policies would block it since I did not express that I knew what it was doing. I had to go into the stripe-app.json file and mention the specific security policies. For this particular exercise, I kept these as null. This is my stripe-app.json file. ` 6\. Configure App Views As you can see here, the stripe-app.json file shows the views for each file I have. The Home.tsx file and the Invoice.tsx are also included This is our way of saying that for each view we have, show the app functionality on that page. Our stripe-app.json file will show it but also, the manifest.js file in our .build folder will also show the same. Any view that doesn't have a file will not show the application's functionality. So, if I were to go to transactions, the app would not show the same logic as the home or invoices page. By following these steps, you'll have a fully functional QR code generator app for Stripe. This is just a simple example, but the potential for Stripe apps is massive, especially for businesses serving e-commerce customers. If you need help or get stuck, don't hesitate to reach out, danny.thompson@thisdot.co. The Stripe team is also very active in answering questions, so leverage them as a resource. Happy coding!...

Dec 18, 2024

4 mins

stripe

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New GraphQL Meetup Online with Moon Highway Will Have You Over the Moon!

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