Creating A React App

For my final project I decided to challenge myself a little more by branching off into a project that was not just a bland data management app like previous projects. I decided to go with an app that would allow users to create their own custom flash cards and use those same cards to study for whatever they desire. As I stated before it was out of the ordinary so I knew the journey ahead was going to be a tough one for sure.

I started out by making my Rails API which had become significantly easier thanks to the great material and support from Flatiron staff during the Rails module. Once the API was complete I moved on to create a React app where I imported all of the required extensions and dependencies I would need for the project such as React itself, ReactDOM, Redux, thunk and etc. From that point I immediately started learning how to make asynchronous requests with fetch inside of my components since this was going to be a major focus on the project plus any project involving an API for that matter.

After struggling with the React learning curve for about a week I started understanding asynchronous requests and how to display the data inside of my React components. My project wasn't full CRUD but all I really needed was a Read operation to display information and an Update operation to allow users to create their own cards. Once I felt comfortable I moved on to shaping out the rest of the app with routing, component placement, and eventually styling with CSS.

After a few more weeks plus struggling to study during the holidays I managed to finish my app named "Flash-Study" that met all project requirements, met MVP(Minimum Viable Product) goals, and worked as intended. It was a major learning opportunity for not only React but for all other technologies I learned along the way. This may be the last project for Flatiron but I still have so many more ahead of me that I cannot wait to start!