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Create a dynamic list from JSON • React Native / React.JS

02/01/2020 Nicolas Baptista 0 Comments

How can we create a dynamic list of objects like Views or Texts, dynamically, in a loop in React Native or React.JS from a JSON response from a REST API ?

The objective is to create a dynamic interface with buttons for adding and removing elements like that :

First, we will use the data variable to store a JSON reponse (later you can change it with the API response with a fetch() function), it will contains 3 elements.

[
        {
            "id": "01",
            "name": "Charlie",
        },
        {
            "id": "02",
            "name": "Tango",
        },
        {
            "id": "03",
            "name": "Delta",
        }
]

Then, we will create the json variable to store the parsed JSON from the data variable. It means, the data variable is only a text string and the json variable is a JSON object, so we can do json[0].id for example.

We can put the json variable as a state so if the JSON changes, the UI with refresh automaticaly.

Here is what it should look likes in your code, in the constructor of your class :

export default class DynamicList extends React.Component {
  constructor(props) {
    super(props);

    let data = `
    [
        {
            "id": "01",
            "name": "Charlie",
        },
        {
            "id": "02",
            "name": "Tango",
        },
        {
            "id": "03",
            "name": "Delta",
        }
    ]`;

    let json = JSON.parse(data);
    console.log('json ', json);

    this.state = {
      list: json,
    };
  } 

[...]

Now, to display a list from the state list (it will be this.state.list), we will use the map() function in render(), before the return, to create as many objects that we have elements in the list array.
In your map() function, you will have 2 parameters : data and i. You will have to put the i, the incremental variable, as a “key” in each object you will return as a new element – here, it’s <TouchableOpacity> :

render() {
    // HERE WE MAKE OUR LIST OF OBJECTS
    const soldierList = this.state.contracts.map((data, i) => {
      return (
        <TouchableOpacity
          key={i}
        >
          <View
            style={{
              flexDirection: 'row',
              justifyContent: 'flex-start',
              paddingTop: 5,
              paddingBottom: 5,
            }}
          >
              <Text style={{ fontFamily: 'Gotham-Medium', color: '#8DA8C7' }}>
                {dateShort(data.datestart)}
              </Text>
            </View>
            <View style={{ flexDirection: 'row', right: 0, position: 'absolute', bottom: 5 }}>
              <MaterialCommunityIcons
                name="cross"
                style={{ color: '#0261D2', lineHeight: 20 }}
              />
            </View>
          </View>
        </TouchableOpacity>
      );
    });

    // NOW WE CAN DISPLAY IT, IF THE LIST IS EMPTY WE GOT THE EMPTY LIST MESSAGE
    return (
      <ScrollView style={{ backgroundColor: '#f6f6f6', height: '100%', width: '100%' }}>
        {this.state.list.length < 1 && (
          <View style={{ alignItems: 'center' }}>
            <Text style={{ fontWeight: 'bold', color: '#0361d2', fontFamily: 'Gotham-Medium' }}>
              Empty list !!!
            </Text>
          </View>
        )}
        {this.state.list.length >= 1 && <View>{soldierList}</View>}
      </ScrollView>
    );
  }

UPDATE (SOLUTION 2)

We can optimize it by testing directly the length of the array, making less code in the return :

render() {
     // HERE WE MAKE OUR LIST OF OBJECTS
     const soldierList = this.state.contracts.length ? this.state.contracts.map((data, i) => {
      return (
        <TouchableOpacity
          key={i}
        >
          <View
            style={{
              flexDirection: 'row',
              justifyContent: 'flex-start',
              paddingTop: 5,
              paddingBottom: 5,
            }}
          >
              <Text style={{ fontFamily: 'Gotham-Medium', color: '#8DA8C7' }}>
                {dateShort(data.datestart)}
              </Text>
            </View>
            <View style={{ flexDirection: 'row', right: 0, position: 'absolute', bottom: 5 }}>
              <MaterialCommunityIcons
                name="cross"
                style={{ color: '#0261D2', lineHeight: 20 }}
              />
            </View>
          </View>
        </TouchableOpacity>
      );
    }) : (
      <View style={{ alignItems: 'center' }}>
        <Text style={{ fontWeight: 'bold', color: '#0361d2', fontFamily: 'Gotham-Medium' }}>
          Empty list !!!
        </Text>
      </View> 
    );
 
    // NOW WE CAN DISPLAY IT, IF THE LIST IS EMPTY WE GOT THE EMPTY LIST MESSAGE
    return (
      <ScrollView style={{ backgroundColor: '#f6f6f6', height: '100%', width: '100%' }}>
        {soldierList}
      </ScrollView>
    ); 
 }

MongoDB on RedHat/CentOS/Fedora

02/10/2019 Nicolas Baptista 0 Comments

INSTALLATION OF CENTOS

Add the additionnal following repo to get the mongoDB package not included by default:

nano /etc/yum.repos.d/mongodb-org-4.2.repo

[mongodb-org-4.2]
name=MongoDB Repository
baseurl=https://repo.mongodb.org/yum/redhat/$releasever/mongodb-org/4.2/x86_64/
gpgcheck=1
enabled=1
gpgkey=https://www.mongodb.org/static/pgp/server-4.2.asc

yum install -y mongodb-org

ADDING ADMIN USER

mongo
use admin

db.createUser({
        user: "username",
        pwd: "password",
        roles: [ "root" ]
    } 
)

TESTING

mongo -u username -p password

ACCESS MONGODB FROM INTERNET

sudo nano /etc/mongod.conf

Change 127.0.0.1 (localhost) to 0.0.0.0 (all IP):

#bindIp: 127.0.0.1 
bindIp: 0.0.0.0

Restart the mongod service using this command:

sudo service mongod restart

USING A MONGODB TOOL GUI

You can use several tools to access and manage your mongoDB database. I recommend using the following tools:

Mongo Management Studio available for free (Community version) on http://mms.litixsoft.de/
MongoDB Compass available for free (Community version) on https://www.mongodb.com/products/compass
Robo3T for free on https://robomongo.org/download <—- the best free Mongo GUI

Alert confirmation message for sensible actions

19/06/2019 Nicolas Baptista 0 Comments

Hello everyone,

In your application, is it possible that you made a settings page where the user can edit and remove things inside your app. For example, let’s say there is a button to remove definitely the user account and all his data. We can say that this type of operation is sensible and should be verified.

When the user click on the button “Delete my account”, we will display a message of confirmation “Do you really want to remove your account ?”. If he click DELETE, we will remove it, if not, we will close the message. Simple as that.

In our code, we will first import alert :

 import { ... , Alert } from 'react-native';

Then, you we create a function “deleteAccount” called when the “Delete my account” button is pressed :

  <Button onPress={ () => { this.deleteAccount(); } } title="DELETE MY ACCOUNT"/>

Inside deleteAccount, we will put our Alert message :

How to use WebSockets • React Native

02/04/2019 Nicolas Baptista 0 Comments

It can be very simple to do GET, POST, PUT and DELETE requests with React Native (see the official Expo documentation https://docs.expo.io/versions/latest/react-native/network/), therefore, those requests are not interesting when we want to do a chat for example (we can talk about “real time events”).

To do it, you need first to create a WebSocket server. It won’t be on the phone, because usually the phone is only the client.

You can create a simple WebSocket server with this Perl library : https://metacpan.org/pod/Net::WebSocket::Server
Only few lines are necessary to make your WebSocket server running.

In your App.js, you can add the IP of your server in a global variable at the top of your file :

Then in your constructor you can add the WebSocket( WS_ADRESS_SERVER_STRING ) Javascript object, so the websockets will be listen when the application is starting.
You can add the 4 events onopen, onmessage, onerror, onclose :

Now you should add ws.send() to send data inside your code or inside your UI with onPress.

Hide and show blocks of content • React Native

01/04/2019 Nicolas Baptista 0 Comments

While creating single page application or making dynamic forms, is it important to show or hide parts that we want the user to see or not.
We simply do this by adding variables in the constructor of the class :

Inside functions of the class we will modify the variables this.level and this.status.
We will display content by testing the value of those variables.
To do it, we will add { this.VARIABLE == VALUE && before the content we want and } at the end. For example :

How to get input text • React Native

31/03/2019 Nicolas Baptista 0 Comments

In this article we will see how to get the user input text inside the <TextInput>, very simply.
In this example, we will be using a login page :

Add the reference for each TextInput at the top of your login class, inside the constructor :

Then, put the ref tag inside the each TextInput.
Attribute this ref tag to each variable that have been referenced. Here is the example with this.logInput :

Now you can get the value by using this.logInput.current._lastNativeText inside our code.

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