Web Tricks Archives

27Feb

By phpInfoNo Comments

CSS Tricks, Web Tricks

An Introduction To CSS Cascade Layers

CSS recently turned 25 years old, and over that time, many techniques and tools have been created to help developers work with the cascade. Within the last year, a new spec to orchestrate the “C” in CSS was drafted and is now an official candidate recommendation: cascade layers. Cascade layers allow controlling the specificity and order of rule sets across stylesheets. We all have run into CSS collisions and sudden regressions in our codebases when new styles are written or 3rd-party styles are added. This is because of the interdependence of styles due to source order, specificity, and inheritance. Some ways to control the cascade have included methodologies like ITCSS and BEM and other newer native features like CSS custom properties and :where/:is. Cascade layers will be the ultimate na...

27Feb

By phpInfoNo Comments

CSS Tricks, Javascript, Web Tricks

Getting Started With the File System Access API

The File System Access API is a web API that allows read and write access to a user’s local files. It unlocks new capabilities to build powerful web applications, such as text editors or IDEs, image editing tools, improved import/export, all in the frontend. Let’s look into how to get started using this API. Reading files with the File System Access API Before diving into the code required to read a file from the user’s system, an important detail to keep in mind is that calling the File System Access API needs to be done by a user gesture, in a secure context. In the following example, we’ll use a click event. Reading from a single file Reading data from a file can be done in less than 10 lines of code. Here’s an example code sample: let fileHandle; document.querySelector(".pick-file"...

5Nov

By phpInfoNo Comments

Web Tricks

GraphQL On The Front-End (React And Apollo)

One of the main benefits of GraphQL is the client’s ability to request what they need from the server and receive that data exactly and predictably. Without much effort, one can easily pull nested data by just adding more properties to our queries instead of adding multiple endpoints. This prevents issues like over-fetching that can impact performance. Usually, to handle GraphQL on the client-side, we make use of the Apollo Client. It allows developers to define, handle, and make queries/mutations available within our application. It can also act as a state management tool with your client-side application. In this article, we’re going to learn how to handle real-time updates on the client-side using GraphQL. We’ll be learning how to do this with GraphQL Features like Cache Update, Subsc...

29Aug

By phpInfoNo Comments

Web Tricks

React Children And Iteration Methods

The most obvious and common prop that developers work with within React is the children prop. In the majority of cases, there is no need to understand how the children prop looks like. But in some cases, we want to inspect the children prop to maybe wrap each child in another element/component or to reorder or slice them. In those cases inspecting how the children prop looks like becomes essential. In this article, we’ll look at a React utility React.Children.toArray which lets us prepare the children prop for inspection and iteration, some of its shortcomings and how to overcome them — through a small open-source package, to keep our React code function the way it is deterministically supposed to behave, keeping performance intact. If you know the basics of React and have at least an ide...

5Jun

By phpInfoNo Comments

Web Tricks

Making GraphQL Work In WordPress

Headless WordPress seems to be in vogue lately, with many new developments taking place in just the last few weeks. One of the reasons for the explosion in activity is the release of version 1.0 of WPGraphQL, a GraphQL server for WordPress. WPGraphQL provides a GraphQL API: a way to fetch data from, and post data to, a WordPress website. It enables us to decouple the experience of managing our content, which is done via WordPress, from rendering the website, for which we can use the library of the framework of our choice (React, Vue.js, Gatsby, Next.js, or any other). Until recently, WPGraphQL was the only GraphQL server for WordPress. But now another such plugin is available: GraphQL API for WordPress, authored by me. These two plugins serve the same purpose: to provide a GraphQL API...

31Mar

By phpInfoNo Comments

Web Tricks

Reactivity In Vue

In this article, we’re going to look at reactivity in Vue, how it works, and how we can create reactive variables using newly created methods and functions. This article is targeted at developers who have a good understanding of how Vue 2.x works and are looking to get familiar with the new Vue 3. We’re going to build a simple application to better understand this topic. The code for this app can be found on GitHub. By default, JavaScript isn’t reactive. This means that if we create the variable boy and reference it in part A of our application, then proceed to modify boy in part B, part A will not update with the new value of boy. let framework = 'Vue'; let sentence = `${framework} is awesome`; console.log(sentence) // logs "Vue is awesome" framework = 'React'; console.log(sentence) //...

2Feb

By phpInfoNo Comments

Javascript, Web Tricks

How to disable the mobile keyboard from displaying on click of the input field

Have you ever needed a way to disable the mobile screen keyboard from displaying for a specific input field? I was recently working on a Shopify website where there was a filter on the products listing page. I found an issue that on click of that filter it was opening keyword on the mobile screen. I debugged and found that it's a bootstrap filter and creating an input box automatically at run time. The solution to this was rather simple and I’d like to share it here for anyone else who is looking for a solution to this problem. To block the mobile device keyboard from displaying you simply need to set the field to readonly with jQuery as displayed in the code below. // Using ID field$('#input_id').attr('readonly','readonly'); // Using class name$('.input_class').attr('reado...

17Jan

By phpInfoNo Comments

Web Tricks

Integrating A Dialogflow Agent Into A React Application

Dialogflow is a platform that simplifies the process of creating and designing a natural language processing conversational chat assistant which can process voice or text input when being used either from the Dialogflow console or from an integrated web application. Although the integrated Dialogflow Agent is briefly explained in this article, it is expected that you have an understanding of Node.js and Dialogflow. If you are learning about Dialogflow for the first time, this article gives a clear explanation of what Dialogflow is and its concepts. This article is a guide on how a built a Dialogflow agent with voice and chat support that can be integrated into a web application with the help of an Express.js back-end application as a link between a React.js Web application and the Agent ...

21Dec

By phpInfoNo Comments

Web Tricks

Search Engine Optimization Checklist (PDF)

Search engine optimization (SEO) is an essential part of a website’s design, and one all too often overlooked. The most beautiful, spectacular site in the world won’t do anyone much good if people can’t find it on Google (or Bing, or DuckDuckGo). Implementing SEO best practice doesn’t just give you the best chance possible of ranking well in search engines; it makes your websites better by scrutinizing quality, design, accessibility, and speed, among other things. It’s a daunting world for those who aren’t familiar with it (and even those who are at times), so this checklist breaks down key factors to consider when undertaking an audit. If you’re ready to get stuck in, read on. Table Of Contents Get Ready: A Healthy Mindset Setting Realistic Goals Defining The Environment On-page Off-page...

1Dec

By phpInfoNo Comments

Web Tricks

Reactive Variables In GraphQL Apollo Client

In this article, we will look at how to set up reactive variables, how the GraphQL cache polices come into place in defining read and writes to the cache, and provide the ability for developers to add types that exist on the client-side alone so that we can structure queries for client-side variables same way we can for remote GraphQL data. After learning more about the fundamentals of reactive variables, we will build a simple app that switches the theme of our application to either dark mode or light mode based on the value of our reactive variable. We will be looking at how to query a reactive variable, how to update the value stored in a reactive variable, and how the change in value triggers updates in components that depend on the reactive variable for certain actions to occur. The ...

6Nov

By phpInfoNo Comments

CSS Tricks, Web Tricks

Quick LocalStorage Usage in Vue

localStorage can be an incredibly useful tool in creating experiences for applications, extensions, documentation, and a variety of use cases. I’ve personally used it in each! In cases where you’re storing something small for the user that doesn’t need to be kept permanently, localStorage is our friend. Let’s pair localStorage with Vue, which I personally find to be a great, and easy-to-read developer experience. Simplified example I recently taught a Frontend Masters course where we built an application from start to finish with Nuxt. I was looking for a way that we might be able to break down the way we were building it into smaller sections and check them off as we go, as we had a lot to cover. localStorage was a gsolition, as everyone was really tracking their own progress personally, ...

6Nov

By phpInfoNo Comments

React, Web Tricks

Data Visualization With ApexCharts

ApexCharts is a modern charting library that helps developers to create beautiful and interactive visualizations for web pages with a simple API, while React-ApexCharts is ApexChart’s React integration that allows us to use ApexCharts in our applications. This article will be beneficial to those who need to show complex graphical data to their customers. Getting Started First, install the React-ApexCharts component in your React application and import react-apexcharts. npm i react-apexcharts apexcharts import ReactApexCharts from 'react-apexcharts' The core components of an ApexChart is its configuration object. In the configuration object, we define the series and options properties for a chart. series is the data we want to visualize on the chart. In the series, we define the data and n...

5Nov

By phpInfoNo Comments

Web Tricks

Getting Started With Next.js

Lately, Next.js has termed itself The React Framework for Production, and with such bold claim comes a bevy of features that it offers to help you take your React websites from zero to production. These features would matter less if Next.js isn’t relatively easy to learn, and while the numerous features might mean more things and nuances to learn, its attempt at simplicity, power, and perhaps success at it is definitely something to have in your arsenal. As you settle in to learn about Next.js, there are some things you might already be familiar with and you might even be surprised at how it gives you a lot to work with that it might seem almost overwhelming at face value. Next.js is lit for static sites and it has been well-engineered for that purpose. But it also takes it further with i...

1Nov

By phpInfoNo Comments

Web Tricks

Authentication In Vue.js

Authentication is a very necessary feature for applications that store user data. It’s a process of verifying the identity of users, ensuring that unauthorized users cannot access private data — data belonging to other users. This leads to having restricted routes that can only be accessed by authenticated users. These authenticated users are verified by using their login details (i.e. username/email and password) and assigning them with a token to be used in order to access an application’s protected resources. In this article, you’re going to be learning about: Vuex Configuration with Axios Defining Routes Handling Users Handling Expired Token Dependencies We will be working with the following dependencies that help in authentication: AxiosFor sending and retrieving data from our API ...

How To Build A GraphQL Server Using Next.js API Routes

31Oct

By phpInfoNo Comments

Web Tricks

How To Build A GraphQL Server Using Next.js API Routes

Next.js gives you the best developer experience with all the features you need for production. It provides a straightforward solution to build your API using Next.js API routes. In this guide, we will be first learning what are API Routes, and then create a GraphQL server that retrieves the data from the Github API using the Next.js API Routes. To get the most out of this tutorial, you need at least a basic understanding of GraphQL. Knowledge of Apollo Server would help but is not compulsory. This tutorial would benefit those who want to extend their React or Next.js skills to the server-side and be able to build as well their first full-stack app with Next.js and GraphQL. So, let’s dive in. What Are Next.js API Routes? Next.js is a framework that enables rendering React apps on the cli...