VueJS

Introducing the New Nuxt 2 - Pinia - Tailwind Kit in Starter.dev

Dec 14, 2022

4 min read

Starter.dev is an open source community resource developed by This Dot Labs that provides code starter kits in a variety of web technologies, including React, Angular, Vue, etc. with the hope of enabling developers to bootstrap their projects quickly without having to spend time configuring tooling. We ship starter kits with showcases to demonstrate how to best utilize these kits, and structure more complex projects.

We are excited to announce our new starter.dev kit: a Nuxt 2 kit with Pinia as the state manager, and Tailwind for the styling.

Ok, you might be thinking: "Why should I use a Nuxt 2 kit if Nuxt 3 is just around the corner?" Well, although Nuxt 2 is indeed in just maintenance mode by now, it is the most stable Nuxt version out there, and it is still really powerful, and a great framework for you next app. If you want to build a scalable and stable project, you might want to build it in this version!

Ok, without any further ado, let’s see what this kit is all about, and how you can use it in your next application! Lets first talk about our technological options.

Nuxt

So why Nuxt.js? Lets kick off explaining what Nuxt.js actually is, and why we decided to create a kit with this technology.

Nuxt is a framework built on top of Vue. It helps you handle complex configuration with an easy command-line setup, such as asynchronous routing with middlewares, great SEO using SSR, automatic code-splitting, auto imports and many more.

It also brings its own features, such as build-in components, different ways for getting data from an API, 2 rendering methods (Server-side or Static sites), and even its own loader, transitions, and animations.

At first, you might find Nuxt a bit challenging. For example, if you have never used SSR before, it takes time to get used to it, and you will have to change your mindset from Vue as they handle logic quite differently. But we think all that effort will be worth it, because we think Nuxt is a great framework for your next application. It can make your development experience more gratifying and faster, and your site more SEO friendly.

Pinia

Lets now dive in into the state management library that we choose. As stated from the previous official library Vuex, Pinia is now the default state management library for Vue.

When sharing global state within your application, you want it to be secure and easy to use, especially if you are using SSR as we are more likely doing with Nuxt. Pinia is pretty good at helping us with those matters.

Using Pinia with Nuxt 2 is a bit tricky but nothing crazy. You just need to install an extra package in order to use Composition-API inside Nuxt 2, make some config adjustments, and then you are good to go!

Tailwind

Tailwind is a great utility-first CSS framework that helps you build websites more quickly.

Nuxt helps us set up Tailwind from scratch pretty easily when creating our project from the command-line. It does the config setups, and also installs the packages we need in order to start using it.

What’s inside the Nuxt 2 Kit?

Our main goal when creating a starter.dev kit is to provide the essential things for your project without adding too much configuration to make them as flexible as possible.

The kit includes two main components. The first one is a counter component, managing the state with a Pinia store and a Fetch component showing how data can be fetched inside Nuxt 2. Both of these components have their own Storybook component, and a test component written with testing library and MSW. These are basic examples to demonstrate how you can utilize these technologies together.

The kit also includes ESlint, Prettier and Husky basic configurations. Also, the whole kit is written in TypeScript, which includes configuration within the kit as well. Our goal here is to save you all that time that it would take to get all these tools configured properly when starting a new project.

How do I use the kit?

With our starter.dev CLI! Of course there are other methods, but this one is for sure the easiest one.

Just run the command npx @this-dot/create-starter. After running this command, a list of available starter.dev kits will show up. Of course you can select the best one that fits your needs. In this case, it will be the nuxt2-pinia-tailwind one! It will ask for the name of your new project, and once that is written down, the CLI will start to prepare the kit for you!

Now that the kit is installed, you can cd into your new project directory with the name you provided before, and then start coding! Oh, but don’t forget to install the dependencies needed with your package manager of choice (I recommend pnpm 🫣).

Take a look at https://starter.dev/kits/nuxt2-pinia-tailwind/ so you can have a deeper view of the kit! Where you can read the README.md file for more detailed documentation, as well as looking at the source code, don't forget to read the package.json file to see the scripts available for the kit. Happy coding!

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.

Jesús Padrón

@padron4497 @jesus4497

New Web APIs, CSS, Tailwind, and RSC with Chance Strickland, Ben Lesh, Adam Rackis, and Tracy Lee

Tracy Lee, Adam Rackis, and Ben Lesh host special guest Chance Strickland to discuss topics around new web APIs, CSS, Tailwind, and react server components. They go into detail about a new web API that allows the implementation of dark mode to be really easy, and get excited about how many of these new APIs open up new possibilities for creating user-friendly interfaces that adapt to individual preferences. Chance is curious about the implementation of React Server Components, and how RSCs will be implemented across the React world, and what the implementations will ultimately look like and how wildly different they may be from company to company. Will a standard emerge? Chance also shares his excitement for advancements in CSS and the ability to achieve complex effects with simpler code. And of course, they don’t miss the chance to talk about Tailwind’s tradeoffs and advantages. The four of them emphasize the importance of staying curious and constantly seeking better ways to approach coding tasks. This mindset is crucial in an ever-evolving field like web development. By embracing new technologies and staying open to learning, developers can stay ahead of the curve and deliver exceptional results. Listen to the full episode here: https://modernweb.podbean.com/e/modern-web-podcast-s11e20-new-web-apis-css-tailwind-and-rsc-with-chance-strickland-ben-lesh-adam-rackis-and-tracy-lee/...

Jan 31, 2024

2 mins

Tailwind CSSReact

Getting started with Vitepress

Getting started with Vitepress to create your blog site Have you heard about Vitepress, but you have not checked it out at it yet? Well, in this article, we are going to cover the basic setup and share what all the fuss about this new fantastic static site generator. If you are looking for something that would allow you to quickly create a static site with Markdown support, search, Light/Dark theme, advertisement, navigation, and much more, then Vitepress is what you are looking for. Suppose you want some proof of Vitepress's power without having to invest any further time, I suggest you head over to the main Vitepress site (vitepress.dev) and experience what Vitepress can do, as the official site is built on Vitepress! What is Vitepress Vitepress is a powerful Static Site Generator powered by Vite mainly used for Documentation and Blogs with the default theme, and open to customization to be used for anything you may need it to with custom themes and theme overrides.. Vitepress power comes from its low learning curve, powerful configuration settings, and the ability to easily customize it. For example, internationalization is built-in, Theme toggling is built-in and even full-site searches require a single line in the config to be set up. What makes Vitepress so powerful is its extensive configuration and the fact that it can be customized by overriding the existing theme, creating your theme, or simply enhancing pages with custom Vue code. Prerequisites To successfully run the following demo, you will need: - Node.js version 18 or higher. - Terminal for accessing VitePress via its command line interface (CLI). - Text Editor with Markdown syntax support. - VSCode is recommended, along with the official Vue extension. Create your project To create the project, we will follow the steps shown in the official Getting Started guide. If you want to set up a Vitepress project quickly, run the following steps: - Create a new folder mkdir vitepress-tutorial - Access the folder cd vitepress-tutorial - Install Vitepress npm add -D vitepress - Run the Wizard npx vitepress init - Answer the questions: - Where should VitePress initialize the config? - Site title - Site Description - Theme - Do you want Typescript support? - run npm run docs:dev - Enjoy your site. After you run the above steps, your Vitepress will be ready and running as shown below What is available out of the box The site comes fully set up with enough to get you started. Let's see what features are available within the software: - Navbar: The site comes with a Navbar that already includes links to our blog pages - Light/Dark theme: Out of the box theming - Home page: Basic Homepage layout - Blogs: Two different blog posts with sidebar navigation All of the above is available with just 4 files! Let's move forward and see how to customize our app. Overriding the homepage It is time to modify our site by accessing its folders. What you will probably notice when opening the site, is that Vitepress follows a very simple file structure, in fact, a new installation just includes 4 extra files on top of the expected package.json and node_modules. Let's update our homepage to make it more unique. Because Vitepress follows a "file-system based router" we can find this file within the root of the project within a file called index.md. This file will be accessible at "/" or "/index.html" of your site. The content of the file is the following: ` As you can see, the file has no code in it, and it is just driven by configuration, or more specifically in this case Markdown frontmatter, that is a set of configurations accepted by markdown files that help you set up your options such as title, description, og:image. We will describe frontmatter in more detail later in the article. Before we jump into modifying the configuration of the file, you should know that Vitepress has a very extensive and well-detailed documentation site where you can find help if you are stuck or would like to learn more. In this case, we are overriding the "home" page, so the documentation can be found here: Home Page Default Theme configuration. If you read the current file within the homepage, you will notice that it defines a "layout" of "home". This layout displays a main header with CTAs and a set of feature blocks. There are three different layouts available in the Default theme: "home", "doc" and "page". The title and description have already been set from the information we provided from the installation wizard. But the rest is just a basic boiler template. Let's see what we can change: 1) Add a hero image. This image can either be externally sourced or saved within the repository. ` 2) Update the action buttons. ` As shown above, Action buttons have two themes "brand" or "alt" and can accept internal or external links. Vitepress is clever enough to set the external links to open in a new tab and set the rel="noreferrer". 3) Change the feature blocks: Features blocks are great for engaging with the user and telling them what makes your site special. This accepts an icon and some text, so let's change ours with the following: ` The homepage is now completed and updated and it should look like this: Please note that what we did on the homepage is just changing the markdown front matter of the "home" layout. What this means is that if you want to, you can easily customise the page further by either adding more blocks to the layout file or actually by writing and styling the rest of the page as normal. Site configuration In this step, we are going learn about the main site configuration and how we can use it to customize our site. The configuration file can be found in the .vitepress folder under the name of "config.mjs". Just like the homepage layout, the configuration used in the preset file is self-explanatory: ` This file is very important and you are probably going to have it open at all times as it is going to be responsible for the layout of the sidebar navigations of your site. In this section, we are going to learn how to use the Vitepress configuration file to achieve the following: - Modify the sidebar navigation - Enable Search - Add Favicon to your site Modify the sidebar navigation The sidebar is the component displayed on the left-hand side of the blog pages. This is not automatically generated, but it is manually set in this file. You can have more than one navigation, so, for example, you could specify sidebar navigation that shows in pages that have "/blog/" within their path and another one for all markdown pages that have "/tutorials/". Let's see how to implement this: ` With the above code, there will be 2 different sidebars. One will just show if the URL includes "/blog" and the other will be displayed if the path includes "tutorials". Clicking on the above items will give a 404 error as we do not have any pages in that specific location. Still, we can easily fix the issue by creating the two folders "blog" and "tutorial" and creating the required files within these folders in our case are "index.md" and "one.md" for the blog and "index.md" and "two.md" for tutorials. The sidebar has further settings like the ability to create a nested tree or create collapsable menus. You can learn more by checking out the the official documentation on default theme sidebar. Enable Search No documentation or blog site is complete until a search is fully implemented on it. Luckily for us, enabling a site-wide search is extremely simple with Vitepress. Vitepress supports two different search types: a full-text search using minisearch and Algolia based search. In this tutorial, we are going to enable the full-text search. This is fully built-in and requires no external accounts. To enable search, we need to add a "Search" parameter within our themeConfig and set the provider to "local". We can add this right below the socialLinks. ` With just a simple config change, our site will now have a full site search working as shown below: The official search documentation has further information about the look and functionality of the search. Add Favicon to your site Even if the site configuration is very extensive, there are times when you will need to add something within the site-wise page that is not available. In this section we are going to learn how to add specific attributes to the of our site, and specifically how to add a favicon. To add custom values to the head, we are going to use the "head" properties available with the Vitepress configuration. The "head" configuration is an array that accepts an array with the element type (eg. link, script, meta), and an object including all the attributes for that specific element. So for example to replicate the following HTML: ` we would define the following head config: ` We can use this technique to set up metadata and even load fonts or Google Analytics. More info in the site-config head Writing your post In the last section of this article, we are going to learn how to actually write a blog post and also learn how to customize the pages with JS and styles. Writing your first page In the previous section, we created a couple of markdown files, but they are currently empty. Let's see how to create beautiful documentation using the built-in feature of Vitepress. In this section, we are going to work on the file stored in /blog/index.md. This file can be accessed in your browser by accessing "http://localhost:5174/blog/index.html". Blog Frontmatter Every file needs to have a frontmatter defined. This is used to define basic information on the page, such as the title, description, and more. For best SEO results, it is best practice to always define a title and description for a new page. We can do this by adding the following code at the top of our file: ` Frontmatter in Markdown files are delimited by the "---". In the above code, we set our title and description. Vitepress frontmatter supports further config like lastUpdates, sidebar, outline, and more. You can find info on the frontmatter-config documentation. Frontmatter has some global configuration, such as title and description, but also "layout specific" settings that are just available on specific layouts. This is clearly explained in the documentation. Blog Markdown Now that our post frontmatter is set, it is time to write the content of it. This is done using a very extensive markdown engine. Let's start with the basics and write a heading with some text and a link as shown below: ` After saving, our development environment will show the following results: Let's add a couple of headings and a table of contents to our document using [[toc]] to the top of our page: ` The above will produce an unordered list with all our links. The last feature that I want to share about the Vitepress markdown engine is the code editors. The markdown engine used in Vitepress offers extensive features when it comes to code rendering. Features available are "code highlight", "code focus", external snippets loading and much more. The full list of features can be found in the markdown docs. Let's implement a simple code snippet with a line of code focused. This can be achieved by adding "// [!code focus]" at the end of our row. Let's give it a try: ` The output of this will be: Customize your blog with Vue In this last section, we will learn how to customize our code by adding js logic, style, and external components. Before we begin, it is important to understand that when you use the default template of Vitepress, your pages are going to be rendered with Vue. This means that we can expand the individual page's functionality by rendering other vue components and/or writing logic and styles directly on the page. To better explain this concept, we are going to create a team page. Create a file called team.md within the root of our repository. This file will be accessible on "http://localhost:5174/team.html" and will be just a simple Markdown file. First, we set up the frontmatter as before. In this case, we have to specify an additional config called "layout". This will ensure the page has no style or components loaded such as sidebar or aside. ` Then we will have to create our team variable, just like a normal Vue component; we can do so by defining a script setup tag and defining the constant there. ` In the above code, we have imported the VPTeamMembers component from the vitepress/theme and defined an array of members. The values used in the members array are hardcoded, but as you may expect, you can load this information directly from an API. We now have to use the "members" variable within our file. We can do so by writing normal JavaScript. The markdown file will evaluate the JavaScript and render it, so in the following example it will render a specific component. ` Before we move forward we need to define some style as the page is unstyled since we have loaded the layout of "page". Just like we did with the tag, we can load a tag and update our styles: ` The completed file will look like this: ` The file above now includes: - A frontmatter that specifies a "page" layout - A script tag that loads an external component and defines a variable - Styles to make the page pretty - Markdown with a custom component The completed team page would render the following: Conclusion Vitepress is an extremely flexible static site generator. Its default theme provides you with everything you need to get started quickly. The ability to load external themes, enhance the current theme, and or write custom code within your page makes this tool extremely powerful. In future articles, we will discover what components are available within the Default Theme and see how you can make the most of your Vitepress site but keep on coding....

Dec 21, 2023

12 mins

VueViteVitepress

How Vim Transformed My Workflow for the Better

> Before getting into this article, I want to say that this is just my personal experience. I don’t think Vim is the best editor for everyone, but it worked well for me. What is Vim for you who don’t know? Well, Vim is a text editor, which is a tool you use to write and edit text or code on your computer. What makes Vim unique is that it has lots of keyboard shortcuts. Instead of using the mouse to click around, you can keep your fingers on the keyboard, making you faster once you get the hang of it. I've always heard good things about Vim. People say it’s great and that once you learn it, it can speed up your coding. Vim users sometimes act like they’re in a special club, which is funny. But jokes aside, I was curious because of all the good things I heard, especially about how comfy and efficient it is for coding. I knew learning Vim wouldn’t be easy. From past experiences (like learning touch typing), I knew it would be like climbing a steep hill. It's akin to learning to ride a bike with special gear. At first, it might feel tricky, but once you get used to it, you can ride faster and smoother. There’s a stage I like to call the "Hybrid" point. It's when you’re getting to grips with something new, and you're not proficient at it yet, but you also start losing comfort with the old way of doing things. This phase is a bit frustrating, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to go through this again as it could have led to a decrease in productivity, which was the opposite of what I was aiming for. However, the prospect of a smoother and faster coding experience kept me excited to try Vim. Discovering a New Coding Comfort Zone So, I began my journey with Vim. I started learning the basic moves by chatting with GPT and playing Vim Snake – A fun game that's like the classic snake game, but with Vim controls – Slowly but surely, I got the hang of it. Once I felt more at ease, I decided to add a Vim plugin to my IDE. Right now, I'm using IntelliJ. This plugin let me use Vim right inside IntelliJ. It was the best of both worlds—I could use Vim’s quick commands and still have my IDE’s features, plus the option to use my mouse when I wanted to. In the beginning, the transition was rough. I felt out of my element, constantly reaching for my mouse. My coding speed took a hit as I was making more mistakes. For instance, I’d try to edit a line of code, and end up deleting it or accidentally switching to another tab. It was frustrating. But I pushed through the initial hurdles, working in this odd hybrid mode with both my mouse and Vim commands. Gradually, things started to click and my workflow began to improve. As the weeks went by, I got more and more comfortable. There were times I’d code without touching the mouse, and let me tell you, it felt AMAZING. Here's why: Just using your keyboard to zip around your code is a total game-changer. Here's a simple example to illustrate this. Let's say you want to move the line of code you're on to the line below. Normally, you'd grab your mouse, highlight the code, cut it, hit enter to create a new line, paste the code, then put the mouse down to continue coding. With Vim, you just press the "dd" keys to cut and copy the line, then “p” to paste it below. And just like that, you're done! It may seem small, but when all these little time-savers add up, you end up saving a TON of time. Without Vim With Vim --- But the magic of Vim doesn't end there. You can tweak Vim in numerous ways by adding your own commands, modifying existing ones, or loading up on plugins to extend its functionality. For instance, I tried out the easy-motion plugin and it’s been a game-changer for navigating through files. I also set up shortcuts to switch between tabs, which has made things even smoother. With all these enhancements, I found myself breezing through code like a pro and seeing what I needed in no time. And if I ever need a new command, a quick chat with GPT sets me right back on track! The more I explored Vim, the more I discovered its immense potential. It's not just a text editor; it's a powerful tool that can be molded to fit your coding style. From creating custom key mappings to defining your own text objects, Vim allowed me to tailor my editing environment exactly how I wanted. And the community around Vim is incredible. There’s a plethora of resources: tutorials like vimtutor, courses such as Vim Basics Course, Learning Vim in a Week, interactive apps, blogs, and plugins available that can help overcome any challenge I faced. It's been a rewarding journey that not only improved my efficiency but also broadened my perspective on what's possible with the right tools. The journey with Vim has also opened up a new world of exploration for me. I’ve started checking out other text editors and tools that prioritize keyboard use, seeking to refine my setup further. Each new discovery, whether it's a handy plugin or a clever command, feels like unlocking a new level in a game. It’s exciting to think that there's so much more to learn and that I can continue to fine-tune my workflow. I know there's still much to explore, but the excitement keeps growing—it's genuinely enjoyable! Up next on my adventure is diving into Neovim, and I can't wait to share my experiences with it. Conclusion It's clear that stepping out of my comfort zone and delving into Vim has been nothing short of transformative. But it revamped my coding workflow and ignited a newfound curiosity to explore and learn. The hurdles encountered along the way were just stepping stones to achieving a level of proficiency that I now enjoy. Vim, with its simplicity yet profound flexibility, has proven to be more than just a text editor—it's a coder's companion on the journey towards efficiency and mastery. As I venture further, experimenting with Neovim and other tools, the horizon of possibilities keeps expanding. In the realm of coding, time is of the essence, and Vim has gifted me the ability to reclaim it, one keystroke at a time. It's not just about the shortcuts or the plugins; it's about the mindset of continuous learning and improvement that Vim instills. This blog post is not just an endorsement of Vim but a testament to the boundless exploration that awaits when one is willing to embrace new tools and methodologies....

Dec 20, 2023

5 mins

VimToolingSoftware EngineeringTips

Intro to EdgeDB - The 10x ORM

Intro to EdgeDB - The 10x ORM I’ve written a couple of posts recently covering different TypeScript ORMs. One about Prisma, and another about Drizzle. ORM’s are a controversial topic in their own right - some people think they are evil, and others think they are great. I enjoy them quite a bit. They make it easy to interact with your databases. What is more important and magical for an application than data? SQL without an ORM is amazing as well, but there are some pain points with that approach. Today I’m excited to write about EdgeDB, which isn’t _exactly_ an ORM or a database from my perspective (although they call themselves one). It is, however an incredibly impressive piece of technology that solves these common pain points in a pretty novel way. So if it’s not an ORM or a database, what exactly is it? I don’t think I can answer that in one or two sentences, so we will explore the various pieces that make up EdgeDB in this article. From a high-level standpoint, though, an interface/query language that sits in front of PostgreSQL. This may seem like some less important implementation detail, but in my eyes, it’s a feature and one of the most compelling selling points. Data Modeling EdgeDB advertises itself as a “graph-relational database”. The core components of EdgeDB data modeling are the schema, type system, and relationship definitions. A schema will consist of objects that contain various typed attributes and links that connect the objects. In SQL, a table is analogous to an Object, and a foreign-key is associated with a link. Here’s what a simple schema in EdgeDB looks like ` There’s a few things to highlight here * We defined two different objects (tables) User and Post * Each object contains properties with their types defined * str is one of several scalar types (bool, int, float, json, datetime, etc) * the author property is a required link to the User object Defining relations / associations In our example above we defined a one-to-many relationship between a user and posts. All the relation types that you can define in traditional SQL are available. One interesting feature though is called backward links. These can be defined in your schema and it allows you to access related data from both sides of a relationship. ` likes are a many-to-many relationship between Tweet and User. With a backlink defined multi link likers := Tweet.<likes[is User]; - we can access likes from a User and likers from a Tweet. ` That's how we can access these relations in our queries. You might be looking at these queries and thinking it looks a lot like GraphQL. This is why they call it a ‘Graph-relational’ database. We’ve only scratched the surface of EdgeDB schema’s. Hopefully, I’ve at least managed to pique your interest. Computed properties Computed properties are a super powerful feature that can be added to your schema or queries. This example user schema creates a computed discriminator and username property. The discriminator uses an EdgeDB standard library function to generate a discriminator number and the username property is a combination between the name and discriminator properties. ` Globals and Access Policies EdgeDB allows you to define global variables as part of your schema. The most common use case I’ve seen for this is to power the access policy feature. You can define a global variable as part of your schema: global current_user: uuid; With a global variable defined, you can provide the value as a sort of context from your application by providing it into your EdgeDB driver/client. ` You can then add access policies directly to your schema, for example, to provide fine-grained access control to blog posts in your blogging application. ` Aside from access policies, you can use your global variables in your queries as well. For example, if you wanted a query to select the current user. ` Types and Sets EdgeDB is very type-centric. All of your data is strongly typed. We’ve touched on some of the types already. * Scalars - There are a lot of scalar types available out of the box * Custom scalars - Custom scalar types are user-defined extensions of existing types * Enums - Are supported out of the box - enum<Admin, Moderator, Member> * Arrays - Defined by passing the singular value type - array<str>; * Tuples - In EdgeD, tuples can contain more than 2 elements and come in named and unnamed varieties - <str, number>; tuple<name: str, jersey_number: float64, active: bool>; All queries return a Set which is a collection of values of a given type. In the query language, all values are Sets. Sets are a collection of values of a given type. A comma-separated list of values inside a set of {curly braces}. A query with no results will return an empty or singleton set. If we have no User values stored yet - select User returns {}. Paired with the query language types and set provides an incredibly powerful and expressive system for interacting with your data. If you thought TypeScript was cool, wait until you start writing EdgeQL! 🙂 EdgeQL Now to the fun stuff: the query language. We’ll use a schema from the docs and start by looking at some of those queries and build on those. The example schema has an abstract type Person with two sub-types based on it Hero and Villian. This is known as a polymorphic type in EdgeDB. The Movie type includes a 1:m association with Person ` Selecting properties / data Before we dig into some real queries we should just touch on how we select actual data from a query. It’s pretty obvious and GraphQL-like but worth mentioning. To specify properties to select, you attach a shape. This works for getting nested link / association data as well. Based on our schema, here’s how we could select fields from Movie, including data from the collection of related characters. ` There is also a feature called a splats that allows you to select all fields and/or all linked fields without specifying them individually. ` If you don’t specify any properties or splats, only id’s get returned select Movie; . Adding some objects with insert To get started, we can use insert to add objects to our database. We’ll start big by looking at the nested insert example. This example is interesting because it shows the creation of two objects in a single query. You’ll notice the simplicity of the syntax. Even though this is the first EdgeQL query we’re looking at, in my experience, it’s like this across the board. I’ve found EdgeQL queries to be simple and intuitive to the point where I’ve been able to intuit how to accomplish things in my head without having to reference the docs or ask the AI. This example adds a new Villian and a new Hero which gets assigned as a link or association to the nemesis field on our Villian. To accomplish this we see that we can nest queries by wrapping them in (). ` The next example is pretty similar, but instead of creating the linked property, we are select ing and adding several potential objects to the characters list of Movie since it is a multi link. This is a pretty complex query that is doing a lot of different things. It’s deceivingly succinct. To accomplish the same thing with SQL this would probably be about 3 different queries. This query finds the objects to add to the characters multi link by filtering on a collection of different strings to match against the name property. ` The last thing we’ll cover for insert is bulk inserts. This is particularly useful for things like seed scripts. In this example, you can just imagine that you have a JSON array of objects with hero names that gets passed in as an argument to your query ` Querying data with select We’ve already seen subqueries and a select in the last section where we found a collection of Person records with a filter. We’ll build on that and see what tools are available to us when it comes to querying data. This one covers a lot of ground. Very similar to SQL we have order and limit, and offset operators to support sorting and pagination. Also there is a whole standard library of functions and operators like count that can be used in our queries. This example returns a collection of villian names, excluding the first and last result. ` Most commonly, you will want to filter by an id ` Here’s another common example filtering by datetime. Since we’re using a string value here we need to cast it to the EdgeDB datetime type. ` You get a pretty similar toolbox to SQL when it comes to filtering with your common operators and things. Combined with all the tools in the standard library, you can get pretty creative with it. Changing values and links with update The update..filter..set statement is how we can update existing data with EdgeQL. set is followed by a shape with assignments of properties to be updated. ` You can replace links for an object ` or add additional ones ` An even more interesting example is removing links matched on a type. Since Villian is a sub-type of Person , this query will remove all characters linked of the Villian type. ` Deleting objects with delete Deleting is pretty straight forward. Using the delete command you can just filter for the objects that you would like to remove. ` When the EdgeQL pieces fall into place As you become more familiar with the EdgeQL query language chances are you’ll start writing very complex queries fluently because everything just makes sense once you’ve learned the building blocks. Domain and business concerns I don’t think they explicitly mention this as a goal anywhere but it’s something that I picked up on pretty quickly. EdgeDB nudges you to move more of what might have traditionally been application logic into your database layer. This is a topic that can bring a lot of division since even things like foreign keys and constraints in SQL are frowned upon in some circles. EdgeDB goes as far as providing constraints, global variables, contexts, and authorization support built into the database. I think that the ability to bake some of these concerns into your EdgeDB Schema is great. The way you model your schema and database in EdgeDB map to your domain in a much more intuitive way where domain concerns don’t really feel out of place there. Database Clients and Query Builders and Generators We’ve covered a lot so far to highlight what EdgeDB is and how to handle common use cases with the query language. To use it in your project though, you will need a client/driver library. There are clients available in several different languages. The one that they clearly have put the most investment into is the TypeScript query builder. We’ll briefly look at both options: simple driver/client and query builder. Whichever you end up choosing you will need to instantiate a driver and make sure you have a connection to your database instance configured. Basic client Although the TS query builder is very popular and pretty amazing, I couldn’t get away from just writing EdgeQL queries. In my application, I composed queries using template strings, and it worked great. The clients all have a set of methods available for passing in EdgeQL queries and parameters. querySingle is a method for queries where you are only expecting a single result. If your query will have multiple results you would use query instead. There is also a queryRequiredSingle which will throw an error if no results are found. There are some other methods available as well including one for running queries in a transaction ` The first argument is the query, and the second is a map of parameters. In this example we include the title parameter and it is accessed in our query via $title. TypeScript query builder If you have a TypeScript app and type-safety is important, you might prefer using the query builder. It is a pretty incredible feat of TypeScript magic initially developed by the same developer behind the popular library Zod. We can’t cover it in very much depth here but we’ll look at an example just to have an idea of what the query builder looks like in an application. ` The query builder is able to infer the result type automatically. It knows which fields you’ve selected, it knows that the result will be a single item. Query generator There are generators for queries and types. So even if you opt out of using the query builder you can still have queries that are strongly typed. It’s nice to have this option if you want to just write your queries as EdgeQL in .edgeql files. ` We end up with an exported function named getUser that is strongly typed. ` Tools and Utilities The team at EdgeDB puts a big emphasis on developer experience. It shows up all over the place. We’ve already seen some utilities with the generators that are available. There are some other tools available as well that help complete the entire experience. EdgeDB CLI The first and most important tool to mention is the CLI. If you’ve started using EdgeDB then you’ve most likely already installed and used it. The CLI is pretty extensive. It includes commands for things like migrations, managing EdgeDB versions and installations, managing projects and local/cloud database instances, dumps and restores, a repl, and more. The CLI makes managing EdgeDB a breeze. Admin UI The CLI includes a command to launch an admin UI for any project or database. The Admin UI includes a awesome interactive diagram of your database schema, a repl for running queries, and a table to inspect and make changes to the data stored in your database. Summary Adopting newer database technology is a tough sales pitch. Replacing your application’s database technology at any point in its lifecycle is not a problem that anyone wants to have. This is one of the reasons why EdgeDB being a superset of PostgreSQL is a huge feature in my opinion. The underlying database technology is tried and true, and EdgeDB is open-source. Based on this, I would feel confident using EdgeDB if it aligned well from a technical and business perspective. We’ve covered a lot of ground in this post. EdgeDB is feature-packed and powerful. Databases is a tough nut to crack, and I commend the team for all their hard work to help continue pushing forward one of the most important components of almost any application. I’m typically pretty conservative when it comes to databases, but EdgeDB took a great approach, in my opinion. I recommend at least giving it a try. You might catch the EdgeDB bug like I did!...

Apr 26, 2024

11 mins

JavaScriptEdgeDB

Introducing the New Nuxt 2 - Pinia - Tailwind Kit in Starter.dev

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