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##Objective Build a functioning Weather app using the Open Weather API. The end result of this project can be found HERE.
The goal here is to give you just enough guidance for you to struggle without drowning. Note that the steps below are just suggestions. The ideal situation is you look at the completed project, then you build it. However, if you're not up for such things, feel free to follow the (vague by design) steps below. If you get stuck, all steps have coinciding branches for you to reference as a last case scenario.
##Step 0: Examine the Final Product
- Head over HERE and play around with the final project. Think about how you would separate your different components and functionality.
##Step 1: Set up a HelloWorld Component Before I ever start a React app I always create a HelloWorld component just to make sure that I've tied everything together properly. I don't expect you to have all this memorized, but do your best in using proper documentation to wire up everything. If you do get stuck you can refer to the 'step1' branch.
- Fork this repository then clone your fork
- npm install the dependencies you'll need
- Create and configure your .babelrc file
- Create and configure your webpack.config.js file
- In your app directory create and configure your index.html file
- In your app directory create and configure your index.js file to render a HelloWorld component
- Start webpack and make sure everything is working
##Step 2: Let React Router handle Routing The next step I take is setting up React Router to handle my routing. Before I jump into any real coding, again, I make sure everything is wired up correctly.
- Move your HelloWorld component to a Main.js file (I have mine located in a containers folder)
- Set up your route configuration file to activate the Main component whenever a user hits the index '/' path of your app.
- Now instead of rendering to the DOM, render your routes configuration.
- Create a Home component and set it to the IndexRoute in your route configuration.
- At this point when you go to localhost:8080 you should see any UI the Main component spits out as well as any UI the Home component spits out.
- Add the full page background image to the Home component as well as the input field and button. At this point, my app looks like this.
- Finish the UI for the Header component.
- As of right now, my app looks like this (with no actual functionality)
In this step we're going to write up the button to our weather API, though we'll just log the result from now.
- Wire up your button (mine says "Get Weather") to log whatever is in the input field when the button is clicked.
- With the API key we're using, you don't need an API key, but you're going to get rate limited pretty quick. It's free and probably worth it. For more info click here.
- We're going to be querying the weather API for two types of data. A specific city's current weather, and the 5 day forecast for a specific city.
- Those two endpoints are, Current Weather: http://api.openweathermap.org/data/2.5/weather?q=CITY-NAME&type=accurate&APPID=YOUR-API-KEY 5 Day Forecast: http://api.openweathermap.org/data/2.5/forecast/daily?q=CITY-NAME&type=accurate&APPID=YOUR-API-KEY&cnt=5
- Tie up the "Get Weather" button to be able to grab the city's current weather and log it to the console.
- Once the previous step is working, also create the functionality for the 5 day forecast request and test is by hooking it up to the "Get Weather" button. Once it works, change it back to get the current weather.
- If you get stuck with the API check out the "step5" branch. My code is located under /app/helpers/api.js
- Add a new Route to your route config of 'forecast/:city'.
- Create the component(s) that will become active when the user goes to /forecast/SOME-CITY
- Now make it so instead of calling the weather API when we click on the "Get Weather" button, go to this /forecast route we just created.
- As of right now, my app looks like this
Before we had our API request when the user clicked on the "Get Weather" button. However, in Step 6 we removed that and are instead routing to the /forecast route. Now what we need to do it when someone reaches the /forecast route, show a loading indicator while the component fetches the city data from the weather API.
- When someone goes to /forecast, have that component that becomes active fetch the forecast for the specific city which should probably be a route parameter.
- Also make it so this component initially renders "Loading" while the request to the weather API is being made.
- When the request comes back, console.log that data and set loading to false.
- By this point when your user goes to /forecast, they should see a loading screen then when the loading screen goes away they should see the forecast data in the console.
- At this point the component that becomes active when a user navigates to /forecast should have all the data it needs to render properly. So, make that UI look nice.
- As of right now, my app looks like this
Now we want to make it so you can click on a specific day and we'll be taken to a new route which displays that day's weather information more in depth.
- Create a new /detail/SOME-CITY route
- Create the component(s) that are going to be active when that route is matched.
- Add a click handler to every day that when clicked, will go to the new /detail/SOME-CITY route passing through that specific days data through as state.
- At this point you should have a new route that looks something like this
At this point the /detail route should have all the data it needs to render.
- Finish the app by finishing the UI for the /detail route.
The final /detail route should now look like this.
If you got through this, great job. Take a look at my code and compare to what we did differently.
