Eloquent YWeb

A companion workbook for Eloquent JavaScript, Second Edition by Marijn Haverbeke, designed for the YWeb Career Academy (whose living curriculum can be found here).

This workbook is a true-to-industry environment chock full of exercises to drill beginning JavaScript and practice using common build tools, versioning and source control, and automated testing.

Table of Contents:

1. Installation
2. Your First Pull Request (and all future submissions)
3. How to Complete Your Workbook

Installation

Install Homebrew

Homebrew is a command-line package manager for OS X, which means it is a tool that helps you find, install, and update other tools that were not installed on your system when it came out of the factory. (Go here if you'd like to learn more about Homebrew.)

Copy and paste this into the terminal:

ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"

Type this to verify your installation:

brew -v

You should get something like this:

Homebrew 0.9.5

Install and Configure Git and GitHub

Install Git

Git is the most popular versioning and source control software currently in use. It allows you to keep past working versions of your code safe from experimentation, and it allows multiple developers to work on the same code base without interfering with each other.

See if you have Git installed by typing

git --version

If you get something like

git version 2.x.x

go on to the next step. Otherwise, use Homebrew to install Git with

brew install git

Now check your version again to verify your install.

Configure Git

If you already have a GitHub account for whatever reason, be absolutely certain which email address it uses, because you must use the same email address here. Either way, remember the email you use.

Type the following, substituting your actual name and email address. You must use the quotation marks if spaces are involved.

git config --global user.name "Your Actual Name"
git config --global user.email "Your Actual Email"

You can check your configuration by typing

git config --list

If you like, you can make your Git output colorful with

git config --global color.ui auto

Generate an SSH Key

If you already have an SSH key for some reason, check by typing

ls ~/.ssh/id_rsa

and you'll see something like

/Users/YourName/.ssh/id_rsa

which means you're done with this step (move on to the GitHub section). If you get a No such file or directory message, you'll have to generate a new key.

Again, be absolutely certain you use the same email address for configuring Git, and type the following, substituting your actual email address:

ssh-keygen -C [email protected] -t rsa

Press enter to accept the default key save location.

Hit enter to accept blank passphrase, then hit enter again.

You should get some output like this:

Generating public/private rsa key pair.
Enter file in which to save the key (/Users/student/.ssh/id_rsa):
Created directory '/Users/student/.ssh'.
Enter passphrase (empty for no passphrase):
Enter same passphrase again:
Your identification has been saved in /Users/student/.ssh/id_rsa.
Your public key has been saved in /Users/student/.ssh/id_rsa.pub.
The key fingerprint is:
88:54:ab:77:fe:5c:c3:7s:14:37:28:8c:1d:ef:2a:8d [email protected]

Finally, we'll add the key to the authentication agent with

ssh-add ~/.ssh/id_rsa

You should get some output like this:

Enter passphrase for /Users/student/.ssh/id_rsa:
Identity added: /Users/student/.ssh/id_rsa (/Users/student/.ssh/id_rsa)"

GitHub

Originally Git was invented to help developers work on the Linux kernel, and code was distributed peer-to-peer. It was so loved that GitHub was created: a web-based Git repository hosting service that added many new features such as visualization tools, social networking, wikis, and more.

If you don't already have a GitHub account, go to http://github.com and register for one. Remember to use that same email address!

To add your SSH key to your GitHub account, first copy it to the clipboard with

pbcopy < ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub

Navigate to http://github.com and make sure you are logged in. Click the black gear icon in the top right corner. This will take you to the account settings page.

On the account setting page, select SSH Keys from the column on the left.

If you've installed GitHub for Mac already, you should see your key here, in which case you're done with this step.

If you don't see a key assigned to your computer, click the button that says Add SSH Key. In the title field give a name for your key that makes sense, such as your computer's name. In the key field, paste the key you copied.

Click Add Key.

Confirm the action by providing your GitHub password.

Install Node.js

Node is an open-source, cross-platform runtime environment for server-side applications. Node apps are written in JavaScript (even though JS was ostensibly developed for front-end scripts). Node also comes with a REPL (read-eval-print loop) and can be used to run scripts on the command line (so all calls to console.log() print to the terminal).

Use Homebrew to install Node with

brew install node

Verify your installation with

node --version

You should expect some output like this:

v0.10.35

You can play around with Node REPL by typing

node

It will give you a prompt (>) that you can use like a JS console. Quit the REPL by pressing ^c (Control+C) twice.

Fork the Workbook

The workbook lives in—or, actually is this very repository on GitHub. You need your own, local copy to work on, so you'll have to fork it and then clone it.

Navigate to the workbook at https://github.com/YWebCA/EloquentYweb. At the top-right of the page, click the Fork button. If asked what account to fork it under, select your personal account.

Your browser will be moved to your fork of the repo on GitHub (if not, go there now. The URL should be in the form of https://github.com/YourName/EloquentYWeb). The following steps will then make a local clone of your fork. In the right column, change the clone URL to SSH and then click the clipboard button.

In the terminal type the following:

mkdir ~/git
cd ~/git

Then type git clone and paste the SSH clone URL. Your full command should look something like this:

git clone [email protected]:YourName/EloquentYWeb.git

When it's done, change into your repo's directory:

cd EloquentYWeb/

Normally forks are meant to diverge from the original repo such that if changes are made to the original, they won't affect your fork. However, for this workbook you want to make sure to receive changes made to the "mothership," so you have to tell Git to listen for them. Type

git remote add upstream [email protected]:YWebCA/EloquentYWeb.git

Verify your list of your remote addresses with

git remote -v

You should get something like this:

YWebCA    [email protected]:YWebCA/EloquentYWeb.git (fetch)
YWebCA    [email protected]:YWebCA/EloquentYWeb.git (push)
origin    [email protected]:YourName/EloquentYWeb.git (fetch)
origin    [email protected]:YourName/EloquentYWeb.git (push)
upstream  [email protected]:YWebCA/EloquentYWeb.git (fetch)
upstream  [email protected]:YWebCA/EloquentYWeb.git (push)

The remote origin is your fork, and the remote upstream is the "mothership." Because the YWebCA organization owns the EloquentYWeb repo, YWebCA will show up as a remote if you are a member of the organization.

Bower Components

The workbook includes a lot of other useful components that were, themselves, installed by Bower, a package manager for front-end libraries and frameworks. Because they're already included, you don't need to install Bower, yourself, although you may want to in the future.

Here are the included packages:

• Jasmine: A JavaScript testing framework. The workbook uses it to check your work and to help you troubleshoot problems.

• JSHint: A JavaScript linter, which checks that code follows validity and stylistic rules. It's a good way to catch (some) errors before scripts are actually run.

• JQuery: A framework that drastically simplifies DOM querying and manipulation with JavaScript. In addition to being useful on its own, many other components require it.

• Underscore.js: A JavaScript library that provides utility functions for common programming tasks.

• Bootstrap: A framework created by Twitter that gives access to a large library of visual components, including responsive grids, interactive widgets, and a comprehensive theme.

• Font Awesome: A library of common, easy-to-use icons.

Install Dependencies

Type this into the terminal:

npm install

npm is short for Node Package Manager, another package management tool that searches, installs, and updates modules just for Node.js. npm install reads the package.json file in the repo and installs all the things the package file says it needs. In addition to Bower and Grunt, useful build tools, it installs FactoryB, a tool that helps you generate dummy data to test on (elsewhere known as "fixtures").

Hosting EloquentYWeb from Your Computer

Some of the exercises and tests for EloquentYWeb require for the project to be hosted as a website. You will need to download an easy-to-use app to host the project as a website on your local machine.

1. Go to Anvil for Mac and click the download link.
2. Once the download has completed, unzip the file.
3. Find the unzipped app and drag it into your Applications directory.
4. Run Anvil.
5. A small anvil-shaped icon will appear in your status bar. Click it.
6. The fly-out menu has a button to install Pow. Click it and wait for Pow to install.
7. Click the anvil icon again. The fly-out menu has a button to host a site. Click it.
8. Use the file browser to find the EloquentYWeb directory and select it.
9. Any time Anvil is running you can open the workbook by selecting EloquentYWeb from the Anvil fly-out menu or browsing to eloquentyweb.dev in Chrome.

Working on the Workbook

Keep Updated

Commit or stash everything you're working on, then checkout the branch you want to update.

git fetch upstream master
git merge -s recursive -X theirs upstream/master -m "Your commit message"

Doing Exercises

For each chapter...

0. Update your local repo (see "Keep Updated" above).

1. Create and/or check out a branch that corresponds to the chapter.

2. Open index.html in your browser and read the instructions for the exercises.

3. Open spec.html in your browser and see how all the tests are currently failing. Your task is to make them all pass.

4. Open exercises.js in your text editor. All your JavaScript will go in here. It should have some functions skeletoned out for you so the tests run properly.

   1. If the exercises include DOM manipulation, use the exercises.html file as your HTML workspace.

5. As you complete the exercises, save your work and refresh spec.html to watch your tests start passing!

   1. If you're having trouble figuring out what the tests want, open spec.js in a text editor and take a look. (Do not edit the tests—that is super cheating and we will notice.)

6. Commit early and often.

7. If you find a typo or mistake in the workbook, submit an issue on ywebca/EloquentYweb.

Branch Naming Conventions

Please name your branches chapterXX where XX is the number of the chapter you're working on. Only do work on the appropriate branches.

Submitting Work

You will submit work with a pull request to the upstream repo.

First, update your chapter branch you're submitting (see "Keep Updated" above). Then merge chapter branch into master:

git checkout master
git merge chapterXX

Please only merge and submit one chapter at a time.

Push your master branch to GitHub:

git push origin master

Now go to GitHub. You should be able to submit a pull request from either ywebca/EloquentYWeb or yourGitHubUserName/EloquentYWeb. Use the following options:

Base fork: ywebca/EloquentYWeb

Base: yourGitHubUserName

This is a branch we've created for you. If you don't see your name, ask an instructor to make you one.

Head fork: yourGitHubUserName/EloquentYWeb

Compare: master

This will merge your remote origin (your current, theoretically unbroken fork) into your personal branch on the upstream repo.

Write a meaningful message and leave any comments if necessary. Then submit the pull request. Your PR will be reviewed by an instructor or volunteer and merged if accepted. If your PR is not accepted, it will be closed and you can submit another one after correcting your work.