Building a Flashcards App

Follow along with code examples here!

Brainstorming

I want to build a flashcard app.

MVP

I'm imagining a dataset of questions/answers and I can display each question as a "card". When I click on the card, it will "flip" and show me the answer.

Stretch features

I don't have as clear of a picture of how I will implement these details so when planning, I'll list these features as user stories:

  • Users can keep score

  • There is a form so that users can add new flashcards

  • Users can make "playlists" or "quizzes" that show a specific set of flashcards

Setup

First, create the app using Vite: npm create vite@latest (you may be prompted to install the latest version of vite)

npm create vite@latest
# Name it flashcards
# Select React
# Select JavaScript

cd flashcards
npm i

# Delete the contents of App.jsx

Data

I know that I'll need some flashcard data to render.

To get myself started, I used ChatGPT to give me a dataset of flashcards rather than come up with my own set of questions. I asked for the data in JSON format so that I could easily import it into my app.

I asked chat gpt to give me a dataset of flashcard to study react

I then stored the resulting data in a .json file called src/db/flashcards.json (I made a src/db folder since this is sort of like my "database").

{
  "flashcards": [
    {
      "id": 1,
      "question": "What is React?",
      "answer": "React is a JavaScript library for building user interfaces."
    },
    {
      "id": 2,
      "question": "What is JSX?",
      "answer": "JSX is a syntax extension for JavaScript used with React to describe what the UI should look like."
    },
    {
      "id": 3,
      "question": "What are components in React?",
      "answer": "Components are the building blocks of a React application. They encapsulate logic and UI."
    },
    ...
  ]
}

ChatGPT did a great job of giving me data in a format that I could easily use.

  • The data was in an Array which means I can render a "card" for each object using .map() in a ul

  • Each flashcard object had:

    • an id which I can use for list item key props and much more

    • a question and an answer which will be useful for when I want to toggle which text I show to the user.

JSON Server

JSON Server is a tool to we use to spin up a mock API. It basically lets us turn any properly formatted .json file into a full API running on localhost.

It is a great alternative when you don't have the time to build out a full Express API. It does have its limitation in that it cannot support a robust relationships database. Read the JSON Server documentation for more information.

Using the JSON file we created above, we can create a mock API. To set it up we can:

  1. Run npm install -g json-server to install json server globally

  2. Create the .json file. We did this already: db/flashcards.json

  3. From the root of your vite project, split your terminal and run json-server --watch db/flashcards.json --port 4000 to start a mock back-end server on port 4000.

  1. Now, you will have an API that you can access via the URL http://localhost:4000/flashcards (try visiting that URL in your browser!)

json-server only works if the .json file is in the proper format. The JSON file needs to store a JSON object with a top-level property that names the resource to be fetched.

Something like (feel free to copy this):

{
  "flashcards": [
    {
      "id": 1,
      "question": "What is React?",
      "answer": "React is a JavaScript library for building user interfaces."
    },
    {
      "id": 2,
      "question": "What is JSX?",
      "answer": "JSX is a syntax extension for JavaScript used with React to describe what the UI should look like."
    },
    {
      "id": 3,
      "question": "What are components in React?",
      "answer": "Components are the building blocks of a React application. They encapsulate logic and UI."
    }
  ]
}

In this example, "flashcards" is the top-level property which makes http://localhost:4000/flashcards a valid endpoint. When we send a GET request to that endpoint, we'll get back the value of "flashcards".

Q: What would be the endpoint(s) created if this were our JSON file?

{
  "friends": [
    "ben",
    "gonzalo",
    "carmen"
  ],
  "message": {
    "data": "hello world"
  }
}
Answer

http://localhost:4000/friends and http://localhost:4000/messages

Q: How would I make a http://localhost:4000/flashcards/react or http://localhost:4000/flashcards/fetch endpoint?

Answer
{
  "flashcards": {
    "react": [
      {
        "id": 1,
        "question": "What is React?",
        "answer": "React is a JavaScript library for building user interfaces."
      },
      ...
    ],
    "fetch": [
      {
        "id": 1,
        "question": "What does fetch do?",
        "answer": "fetch sends an HTTP request to the provided url."
      },
      ...
    ]
  }
}

Component Structure

To make the MVP, the app can be quite simple. Just render a ul with an li "card" for each flashcard object. So I basically just need my App component and Flashcard component. I'll then map each object in the dataset to a <Flashcard />.

For the MVP, here is what I came up with:

Flashcard Component

The Flashcard component should be focused solely on rendering a single flashcard object. It can maintain its own state to toggle back and forth between showing the question and the answer.

import { useState } from 'react'

const Flashcard = ({ flashcard }) => {
  const [text, setText] = useState(flashcard.question)
  const [backgroundColor, setBackgroundColor] = useState('lightblue')

  const flipCard = () => {
    if (text === flashcard.question) { // show the answer
      setText(flashcard.answer);
      setBackgroundColor('lightgreen');
    } else {
      setText(flashcard.question); // show the question
      setBackgroundColor('lightblue');
    }
  }

  // set the style dynamically using the backgroundColor state
  const style = { background: backgroundColor }

  return (
    <li className="card" onClick={flipCard} style={style}>
      <p>{text}</p>
    </li>
  )
}

  • The Flashcard component takes in a flashcard object as a prop.

  • It also keeps track of two state values: text and backgroundColor which can be toggled between showing the question and showing the answer

  • We provide a style prop to dynamically set the style of the component using the backgroundColor state

  • We render the flashcard as an li with an onClick prop, a style prop, and with the text state rendered.

App Component

The App component needs to fetch the set of flashcards from the json-server URL http://localhost:4000/flashcards when the component first loads and then use that data to render a list of flashcards.

import './App.css'
import { useState, useEffect } from 'react'
import fetchData from './utils/fetchData'
// Check out the helper function ^

const Flashcard = () => {
  // flashcard component
}

function App() {
  const [flashcards, setFlashcards] = useState([]);
  const [error, setError] = useState(null);

  useEffect(() => {
    const doFetch = async () => {
      const [data, error] = await fetchData('http://localhost:4000/flashcards');
      if (data) setFlashcards(data);
      if (error) setError(error);
    };
    doFetch();
  }, []); // run the effect only once

  // Conditionally render the error message 
  if (error) return <p>{error.message}. Refresh to try again.</p>

  return (
    <>
      <h1>Flash Cards</h1>
      <ul>
        {
          flashcards.map((flashcard) => <Flashcard key={flashcard.id} flashcard={flashcard} />)
        }
      </ul>
    </>
  )
}

export default App

Let's break it down:

  • The App keeps track of flashcards and error state.

  • We use useEffect to fetch the flashcard data from our json-server when the component first renders (and only that one time).

    • Then we either invoke setFlashcards or setError depending on the returned data.

  • The App component maps over the flashcards data, creating a Flashcard component for each flashcard object.

  • When rendering a list of components, we use the flashcard object's id as the key and pass along the flashcard object as a prop.

  • Since I kept the starting CSS styles that came with the Vite project, it actually looks okay.

Next Steps

  • Organize my components into separate files

  • Build out stretch features

  • Add better styling

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