Top 6 Helpful Tools for Front-End Development

The internet has a lot of tools developed by the community to ease our lives as front-end devs. Here is a list of my favourite go-to tools that have personally helped me with my work.

You may also like: 6 Front-End Challenges

1. EnjoyCSS

To be honest, although I do a lot of front-end dev, I am not that good with CSS. This very simple tool is my saviour in hard times. It lets you design your elements with a simple UI and gives you the relevant CSS output.

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2. Prettier Playground

Prettier is a code formatter with support for JavaScript, including ES2017, JSX, Angular, Vue, Flow, TypeScript, and more. It removes your original styling and replaces it with standard consistent styling adhering to the best practices. This handy tool has been very popular in our IDEs, but it also has an online version — a playground where you can prettify your code.

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3. Postman

Postman is a tool that has been in my developer toolset since the beginning of my dev career. It has been very useful to check my endpoints in the back end. It has definitely earned its position on this list. Endpoints such as GET, POST, DELETE, OPTIONS, and PUT are included. You should definitely use this tool.

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4. StackBlitz

According to Chidume Nnamdi, this is every user’s favourite online IDE tool. The main reason why is that it brings on our favourite and most used IDE to the web — Visual Studio Code.

StackBlitz allows you to set up your Angular, React, Ionic, TypeScript, RxJS, Svelte, and other JavaScript frameworks with just one click. You can start coding in less than five seconds because of this handy feature.

I have found this tool quite useful, especially when trying out sample code snippets or libraries online. You would not have the time to create a new project from scratch just to try out a new feature. With StackBlitz, you can simply try out the new NPM package in less than a few minutes without creating a project locally from scratch. Nice, right?

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5. Bit.dev

One basic principle of software development is code reusability. This enables you to reduce your development, as you’re not required to build components from scratch.

This is exactly what Bit.dev does. It allows you to share reusable code components and snippets and thereby allows you to reduce your overhead and speed up your development process.

It also allows for components to be shared among teams, which lets your team collaborate with others.

As quoted by Bit.dev, this component hub is also suitable to be used as a design system builder. By allowing your team of developers and designers to work together, Bit.dev is the perfect tool for building a design system from scratch.

Bit.dev now supports React, Vue, Angular, Node, and other JavaScript frameworks.

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6. CanIUse

This online tool can be very handy, as it allows you to find out whether the feature you are implementing is compatible with the browsers you are expecting to cater to.

I have had many experiences where some of the functionalities used in my application were not supported on other browsers. I learned the hard way that you have to check for browser compatibility. One instance was that a particular feature wasn’t supported in my portfolio project on Safari devices. I figured that out a few months after deployment.

To see this in action, let’s check which browsers support the WebP image format.

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As you can see, Safari and IE are not currently supported. This means you should have a fallback option for incompatible browsers. The code snippet below is the most commonly used implementation of WebP images to support all browsers.

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Conclusion

I have tried to fit the best tools I have encountered in my dev career. If you think there are any worthy additions, please do comment below. Happy coding!

Thank you for reading!

#front-end #javascript #webdevelopment #programming

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Top 6 Helpful Tools for Front-End Development

Hermann Frami

1651383480

A Simple Wrapper Around Amplify AppSync Simulator

This serverless plugin is a wrapper for amplify-appsync-simulator made for testing AppSync APIs built with serverless-appsync-plugin.

Install

npm install serverless-appsync-simulator
# or
yarn add serverless-appsync-simulator

Usage

This plugin relies on your serverless yml file and on the serverless-offline plugin.

plugins:
  - serverless-dynamodb-local # only if you need dynamodb resolvers and you don't have an external dynamodb
  - serverless-appsync-simulator
  - serverless-offline

Note: Order is important serverless-appsync-simulator must go before serverless-offline

To start the simulator, run the following command:

sls offline start

You should see in the logs something like:

...
Serverless: AppSync endpoint: http://localhost:20002/graphql
Serverless: GraphiQl: http://localhost:20002
...

Configuration

Put options under custom.appsync-simulator in your serverless.yml file

| option | default | description | | ------------------------ | -------------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | --------- | | apiKey | 0123456789 | When using API_KEY as authentication type, the key to authenticate to the endpoint. | | port | 20002 | AppSync operations port; if using multiple APIs, the value of this option will be used as a starting point, and each other API will have a port of lastPort + 10 (e.g. 20002, 20012, 20022, etc.) | | wsPort | 20003 | AppSync subscriptions port; if using multiple APIs, the value of this option will be used as a starting point, and each other API will have a port of lastPort + 10 (e.g. 20003, 20013, 20023, etc.) | | location | . (base directory) | Location of the lambda functions handlers. | | refMap | {} | A mapping of resource resolutions for the Ref function | | getAttMap | {} | A mapping of resource resolutions for the GetAtt function | | importValueMap | {} | A mapping of resource resolutions for the ImportValue function | | functions | {} | A mapping of external functions for providing invoke url for external fucntions | | dynamoDb.endpoint | http://localhost:8000 | Dynamodb endpoint. Specify it if you're not using serverless-dynamodb-local. Otherwise, port is taken from dynamodb-local conf | | dynamoDb.region | localhost | Dynamodb region. Specify it if you're connecting to a remote Dynamodb intance. | | dynamoDb.accessKeyId | DEFAULT_ACCESS_KEY | AWS Access Key ID to access DynamoDB | | dynamoDb.secretAccessKey | DEFAULT_SECRET | AWS Secret Key to access DynamoDB | | dynamoDb.sessionToken | DEFAULT_ACCESS_TOKEEN | AWS Session Token to access DynamoDB, only if you have temporary security credentials configured on AWS | | dynamoDb.* | | You can add every configuration accepted by DynamoDB SDK | | rds.dbName | | Name of the database | | rds.dbHost | | Database host | | rds.dbDialect | | Database dialect. Possible values (mysql | postgres) | | rds.dbUsername | | Database username | | rds.dbPassword | | Database password | | rds.dbPort | | Database port | | watch | - *.graphql
- *.vtl | Array of glob patterns to watch for hot-reloading. |

Example:

custom:
  appsync-simulator:
    location: '.webpack/service' # use webpack build directory
    dynamoDb:
      endpoint: 'http://my-custom-dynamo:8000'

Hot-reloading

By default, the simulator will hot-relad when changes to *.graphql or *.vtl files are detected. Changes to *.yml files are not supported (yet? - this is a Serverless Framework limitation). You will need to restart the simulator each time you change yml files.

Hot-reloading relies on watchman. Make sure it is installed on your system.

You can change the files being watched with the watch option, which is then passed to watchman as the match expression.

e.g.

custom:
  appsync-simulator:
    watch:
      - ["match", "handlers/**/*.vtl", "wholename"] # => array is interpreted as the literal match expression
      - "*.graphql"                                 # => string like this is equivalent to `["match", "*.graphql"]`

Or you can opt-out by leaving an empty array or set the option to false

Note: Functions should not require hot-reloading, unless you are using a transpiler or a bundler (such as webpack, babel or typescript), un which case you should delegate hot-reloading to that instead.

Resource CloudFormation functions resolution

This plugin supports some resources resolution from the Ref, Fn::GetAtt and Fn::ImportValue functions in your yaml file. It also supports some other Cfn functions such as Fn::Join, Fb::Sub, etc.

Note: Under the hood, this features relies on the cfn-resolver-lib package. For more info on supported cfn functions, refer to the documentation

Basic usage

You can reference resources in your functions' environment variables (that will be accessible from your lambda functions) or datasource definitions. The plugin will automatically resolve them for you.

provider:
  environment:
    BUCKET_NAME:
      Ref: MyBucket # resolves to `my-bucket-name`

resources:
  Resources:
    MyDbTable:
      Type: AWS::DynamoDB::Table
      Properties:
        TableName: myTable
      ...
    MyBucket:
      Type: AWS::S3::Bucket
      Properties:
        BucketName: my-bucket-name
    ...

# in your appsync config
dataSources:
  - type: AMAZON_DYNAMODB
    name: dynamosource
    config:
      tableName:
        Ref: MyDbTable # resolves to `myTable`

Override (or mock) values

Sometimes, some references cannot be resolved, as they come from an Output from Cloudformation; or you might want to use mocked values in your local environment.

In those cases, you can define (or override) those values using the refMap, getAttMap and importValueMap options.

refMap takes a mapping of resource name to value pairs
getAttMap takes a mapping of resource name to attribute/values pairs
importValueMap takes a mapping of import name to values pairs

Example:

custom:
  appsync-simulator:
    refMap:
      # Override `MyDbTable` resolution from the previous example.
      MyDbTable: 'mock-myTable'
    getAttMap:
      # define ElasticSearchInstance DomainName
      ElasticSearchInstance:
        DomainEndpoint: 'localhost:9200'
    importValueMap:
      other-service-api-url: 'https://other.api.url.com/graphql'

# in your appsync config
dataSources:
  - type: AMAZON_ELASTICSEARCH
    name: elasticsource
    config:
      # endpoint resolves as 'http://localhost:9200'
      endpoint:
        Fn::Join:
          - ''
          - - https://
            - Fn::GetAtt:
                - ElasticSearchInstance
                - DomainEndpoint

Key-value mock notation

In some special cases you will need to use key-value mock nottation. Good example can be case when you need to include serverless stage value (${self:provider.stage}) in the import name.

This notation can be used with all mocks - refMap, getAttMap and importValueMap

provider:
  environment:
    FINISH_ACTIVITY_FUNCTION_ARN:
      Fn::ImportValue: other-service-api-${self:provider.stage}-url

custom:
  serverless-appsync-simulator:
    importValueMap:
      - key: other-service-api-${self:provider.stage}-url
        value: 'https://other.api.url.com/graphql'

Limitations

This plugin only tries to resolve the following parts of the yml tree:

provider.environment
functions[*].environment
custom.appSync

If you have the need of resolving others, feel free to open an issue and explain your use case.

For now, the supported resources to be automatically resovled by Ref: are:

DynamoDb tables
S3 Buckets

Feel free to open a PR or an issue to extend them as well.

External functions

When a function is not defined withing the current serverless file you can still call it by providing an invoke url which should point to a REST method. Make sure you specify "get" or "post" for the method. Default is "get", but you probably want "post".

custom:
  appsync-simulator:
    functions:
      addUser:
        url: http://localhost:3016/2015-03-31/functions/addUser/invocations
        method: post
      addPost:
        url: https://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/posts
        method: post

Supported Resolver types

This plugin supports resolvers implemented by amplify-appsync-simulator, as well as custom resolvers.

From Aws Amplify:

NONE
AWS_LAMBDA
AMAZON_DYNAMODB
PIPELINE

Implemented by this plugin

AMAZON_ELASTIC_SEARCH
HTTP
RELATIONAL_DATABASE

Relational Database

Sample VTL for a create mutation

#set( $cols = [] )
#set( $vals = [] )
#foreach( $entry in $ctx.args.input.keySet() )
  #set( $regex = "([a-z])([A-Z]+)")
  #set( $replacement = "$1_$2")
  #set( $toSnake = $entry.replaceAll($regex, $replacement).toLowerCase() )
  #set( $discard = $cols.add("$toSnake") )
  #if( $util.isBoolean($ctx.args.input[$entry]) )
      #if( $ctx.args.input[$entry] )
        #set( $discard = $vals.add("1") )
      #else
        #set( $discard = $vals.add("0") )
      #end
  #else
      #set( $discard = $vals.add("'$ctx.args.input[$entry]'") )
  #end
#end
#set( $valStr = $vals.toString().replace("[","(").replace("]",")") )
#set( $colStr = $cols.toString().replace("[","(").replace("]",")") )
#if ( $valStr.substring(0, 1) != '(' )
  #set( $valStr = "($valStr)" )
#end
#if ( $colStr.substring(0, 1) != '(' )
  #set( $colStr = "($colStr)" )
#end
{
  "version": "2018-05-29",
  "statements":   ["INSERT INTO <name-of-table> $colStr VALUES $valStr", "SELECT * FROM    <name-of-table> ORDER BY id DESC LIMIT 1"]
}

Sample VTL for an update mutation

#set( $update = "" )
#set( $equals = "=" )
#foreach( $entry in $ctx.args.input.keySet() )
  #set( $cur = $ctx.args.input[$entry] )
  #set( $regex = "([a-z])([A-Z]+)")
  #set( $replacement = "$1_$2")
  #set( $toSnake = $entry.replaceAll($regex, $replacement).toLowerCase() )
  #if( $util.isBoolean($cur) )
      #if( $cur )
        #set ( $cur = "1" )
      #else
        #set ( $cur = "0" )
      #end
  #end
  #if ( $util.isNullOrEmpty($update) )
      #set($update = "$toSnake$equals'$cur'" )
  #else
      #set($update = "$update,$toSnake$equals'$cur'" )
  #end
#end
{
  "version": "2018-05-29",
  "statements":   ["UPDATE <name-of-table> SET $update WHERE id=$ctx.args.input.id", "SELECT * FROM <name-of-table> WHERE id=$ctx.args.input.id"]
}

Sample resolver for delete mutation

{
  "version": "2018-05-29",
  "statements":   ["UPDATE <name-of-table> set deleted_at=NOW() WHERE id=$ctx.args.id", "SELECT * FROM <name-of-table> WHERE id=$ctx.args.id"]
}

Sample mutation response VTL with support for handling AWSDateTime

#set ( $index = -1)
#set ( $result = $util.parseJson($ctx.result) )
#set ( $meta = $result.sqlStatementResults[1].columnMetadata)
#foreach ($column in $meta)
    #set ($index = $index + 1)
    #if ( $column["typeName"] == "timestamptz" )
        #set ($time = $result["sqlStatementResults"][1]["records"][0][$index]["stringValue"] )
        #set ( $nowEpochMillis = $util.time.parseFormattedToEpochMilliSeconds("$time.substring(0,19)+0000", "yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ssZ") )
        #set ( $isoDateTime = $util.time.epochMilliSecondsToISO8601($nowEpochMillis) )
        $util.qr( $result["sqlStatementResults"][1]["records"][0][$index].put("stringValue", "$isoDateTime") )
    #end
#end
#set ( $res = $util.parseJson($util.rds.toJsonString($util.toJson($result)))[1][0] )
#set ( $response = {} )
#foreach($mapKey in $res.keySet())
    #set ( $s = $mapKey.split("_") )
    #set ( $camelCase="" )
    #set ( $isFirst=true )
    #foreach($entry in $s)
        #if ( $isFirst )
          #set ( $first = $entry.substring(0,1) )
        #else
          #set ( $first = $entry.substring(0,1).toUpperCase() )
        #end
        #set ( $isFirst=false )
        #set ( $stringLength = $entry.length() )
        #set ( $remaining = $entry.substring(1, $stringLength) )
        #set ( $camelCase = "$camelCase$first$remaining" )
    #end
    $util.qr( $response.put("$camelCase", $res[$mapKey]) )
#end
$utils.toJson($response)

Using Variable Map

Variable map support is limited and does not differentiate numbers and strings data types, please inject them directly if needed.

Will be escaped properly: null, true, and false values.

{
  "version": "2018-05-29",
  "statements":   [
    "UPDATE <name-of-table> set deleted_at=NOW() WHERE id=:ID",
    "SELECT * FROM <name-of-table> WHERE id=:ID and unix_timestamp > $ctx.args.newerThan"
  ],
  variableMap: {
    ":ID": $ctx.args.id,
##    ":TIMESTAMP": $ctx.args.newerThan -- This will be handled as a string!!!
  }
}

Requires

serverless framework
serverless-appsync-plugin
serverless-offline
serverless-dynamodb-local (when using dynamodb resolvers only)
watchman (if Hot-reloading is desactivated it is not required)

Author: Serverless-appsync
Source Code: https://github.com/serverless-appsync/serverless-appsync-simulator
License: MIT License

#serverless #sync #graphql

Aarna Davis

1625055931

Hire Front-end Developer | Dedicated Front-end Programmers In India

Hire top Indian front end developers for mobile-first, pixel perfect, SEO friendly and highly optimized front end development. We are a 16+ years experienced company offering frontend development services including HTML / CSS development, theme development & headless front end development utilising JS technologies such as Angular, React & Vue.

All our front-end developers are the in-house staff. We don’t let our work to freelancers or outsource to sub-contractors. Also, we have a stringent hiring mechanism to hire the top Indian frontend coders.

For more info visit: https://www.valuecoders.com/hire-developers/hire-front-end-developers

#front end developer #hire frontend developer #front end development company #front end app development #hire front-end programmers #front end application development

Olivia Jones

1620207480

Top 10 Front End Development Companies In 2021

Looking for a trustworthy front end development company? Read this blog to know the Top 10 Front End Development Companies in 2021.

For more info read this:https://www.theworldbeast.com/top-front-end-development-companies-in-2021.html

#front end developer #front end development company #hire frontend developer #frontend development company #top front end development companies #hire front-end programmers

Solwin Infotech

1623064198

Front End Development Best Practices To Follow

This is image title
As someone from a non-tech background, you might not understand the complexities of front-end development. What we see on our mobile screens or PCs is a mere fragment of intricately woven code. But if you are looking forward to developing an application, you would have to dive in and know the scopes found in front-end development with the advent of new technologies, tools, and frameworks.

In this blog, we will help you understand the best practices of Front-end development and the burgeoning trends that would help you ensure the quality development of your digital products. Learn about the future of web development is here.

GUI Development Best Practices: UX And UI

Before you start the development work, it is essential to discuss the user experience and user interface of your product. The front-end of any software is the only thing that interacts with your users. Moreover, it is important that you make incredible contact with your users. It is not just about the smoothness; also about navigation; you have to make things as simple as possible for your users to interact with your product.

User Experience Vs. User Interface

Most people confuse user experience and user interface to be one and the same thing. But they cannot be more wrong. User experience and user interface work together; they are different components of your product’s front end? Here are a few things which they share and that differentiate them.

User Experience
Starting with UX, it is a term coined by Don Norman, and when he did that, he did not contextualize it to any kind of software product. It was used for multiple disciplines, including marketing, graphical & industrial design, interface, and engineering.

In software development, it focuses on building user-centric processes that optimize the user interaction with the product. The best practices of delivering a great user experience include; researching customer behavior, understanding the context in which the audience takes action, and creating a systematic vision for the target audience to reach its goal.Use your newfound knowledge to develop an actual graphic design. It needs to be analytical and action-provoking. A good UX designer would always understand the way a user interacts with your product.
User Interface
User experience helps you define the user interface design. It would include the components that make up the entire experience of the product. Additionally, it includes toggle, background, fonts, animation, and other graphical elements.

If the user experience is about how the user interacts with your products, the user interface is about giving them the channels to interact with your product. So, the best practices of creating a rewarding user interface are; following brand style guidelines, intuitive design, support for various screen sizes, and effective implementation.

Front-End Development Best Practices: Design To Development

Once you are done with the design part, it is time to dive into development. The process includes turning the graphical assets into a functioning product. There are various approaches that the software community uses, but the most rewarding one is object-driven design and development as it improves the user experience tenfold.

The object-driven approach allows you to design graphical assets that follow the same design and pattern. Also, it allows you to translate the components for faster delivery and a cohesive UX and UI experience across products and platforms.

The design to development process allows you to build interfaces that include layouts, colors, typography, spacing, and more. Front-end development teams are required to work according to the guidelines of the target platform, and they must focus on the UI and UX peculiarities of product development. It is likely that you may face some temporary technical challenges during development and implementation.

It is a trend to automate the front-end development of software with Zeplin or Avocode. The tools ensure access to the updated design, accurate specs and automatically generate the code snippet that allows faster delivery. Learn about the right process of web development here.

Frontend CSS Frameworks
Depending on the project specification, a software development company would suggest you the right toolsets. The most popular front-end CSS frameworks are Bootstrap, Foundation, Material Design; they are known for increasing the speed of development and come with ready-to-use components that make it easy to replace the manual code and comply with responsive web design standards.

Here is a list of popular front-end development technologies

React
Angular
Vue.JS
Knockout and Backbone

#front end web development #how to learn front end development #how to master front end development #how to practice front end development #is front end development easy

Aarna Davis

1620645201

Top 15 Front-end Development Tools To Use In 2021

In this ever-changing era of web development, most of the businesses are focusing more on front-end development to enhance user interaction, site efficiency, interactivity and look and feel. After a thorough research at ValueCoders, we shortlisted top 15 front-end development tools.

#hire front end developer india #top front end developers #hire a front end developer #outsource frontend development #frontend development tools