SuperGenPy

Creating a Django app with a Postgres db using Docker Compose.

I was following this great tutorial.

To run the app:

docker-compose up command from the top level directory for your project.

The app should be running at port 8000 on your Docker host.

Now that I have my app set and running I want to start creating my content.

I want to create an app where users can login/logout securely and perform CRUD operations with their logins.  That means I will need a Login model. Each login will have some attributes too: a version, length, hash, type and prefix.

Some webs ask you to change your password many times so you can store in this interface the number of the version where you are currently, and don’t have to remember it. Same thing happens with that extras that some webs ask you, like a specific length, or special characters that the SuperGenPass don’t use. If a web asks me about a special character I put it at the beginning of the generated password. This interface would be a great place where you can store all info without compromising your security.

Creating my model.

To be tidy, I am going to create a new app, dashboard, and let know to Django to use it, in supergenpy/settings.py I add ‘dashboard’ to INSTALLED_APPS.

I create my Login model inside models.py and run my migrations:

docker-compose run web python manage.py migrate --noinput

Now, what I want is to see my Login model! For that I create a superuser.

I need the id of my docker-compose container:

docker-compose ps -q

and I run the following command

docker exec -it container_id python manage.py createsuperuser

When you run this command, the server has to be running.

Then, you can return to the browser and login in the admin dashboard (http://localhost:8000/admin/) with the credentials you have set up in the command line when creating the superuser.

Complexity Theory cheat sheet

Space complexity: how much memory an algorithm needs

Time complexity: how much time an algorithm needs

We do care about time complexity, but how do we measure absolute time?

With the number of steps.

The algorithm’s running time depends on the number of items of the input, the input size.

The order of growth: how the algorithm will scale and behave with the input size.

For us it is very important the connexion between the running time and the input size.

Linear time complexity

Our goal is ended up with an approximately linear algorithm in terms of the input. If the algorithm needs 1 ms to process 10 items, 2 ms for 20 items and 10 ms for 100 items it is a linear algorithm. If the third step take for example 100 ms it wouldn’t be linear.

Asymptotic analysis

We only care about the big size inputs and we only keep the terms that grow fast as N becomes larger.

Complexity notations:

  1. The big ordo notation (o)

Describes the running time in terms of the input size.

f(n) = O( g(n) )

f is the running time

n is the input size

2. Big omega notation

It describes the limiting behaviour of a function.

f(n) = Ω( g(n) )

3. Big theta notation

It describes the limiting behaviour of a function.

f(n) = Θ( g(n) )

Algorithms running times:

Factorial complexity(no good),

exponential complexity(no good),

polinomial complexity (no good),

linearithmic complexity (middle point),

linear time complexity (good)(for loop in one level array, searching, printing) O(N),

logarithmic complexity (good),

constant time complexity (best one)(swap variables). O(1)

Complexity classes:

P (polynomial),

NP (nondeterministic polynomial),

NP-complete (the hardest problems in NP),

NP-hard

Linear search

We have a one dimension array and want to search for a number.

Best case scenario: the first time item is the one we are looking for. O(1) running time.

Worst case scenario: the item is not in the array. O(N) running time.

Average case scenario: Item is uniformly distributed from the first index to the last index. O(N) running time.

Binary search

We want to find an item in an array, this time the array is sorted. We can use binary search only if the array is sorted.

If we know de index we can get it with O(1) constant time complexity.

If we don’t know the index we can start at the middle, on every iteration we can discard half the items.

Binary search has logarithmic running time. O(logN)

Bubble sort

Repeatedely steps through the list to be sorted, compares each pair of adjacent items and swaps them if they are in the wrong order.

It is too slows and impractical.

Has quadratic running time O(N2).

Redux (on process)

Redux helps us to create a single source of truth, to group the state of our components in a JavaScript object separate from our containers or components. We can get and update the state we want connecting our component to this separate object. We wrap our component tree so we have access to Redux functions. We can grab the state we want  and Redux will map it to our component as a prop.

We keep our state in the store. To update the data we have in the store we have to send an action, with a type and maybe a payload to the store, who send it to our reducer that holds information for how Redux can update that state depending on the type of the action. Actions and reducers are POJOS.

Any component ‘connected’ will be able to modify the state using an action we’ve defined.

We keep our state in one JS object, the store, and our actions and reducers on another two different JS objects.

Reducers will need a state and an action, and Actions will need a type property and an optional payload.

When we update the state it is very important not return null or undefined, that’s why we use a default return.

Reducers are pure functions. Our reducer never updates the previous state, creates a new state object.

The reducer updates the state but doesn’t persist these changes. To persist these changes we can reassign the return value of the reducer to a variable. We can encapsulate that in a function, in dispatch.

We dispatch an action to the store, who calls our reducer and returns to us a new state.

We create a store function ( which is a closure) to encapsulate the state (so we don’t change it by mistake in other places of our code), to encapsulate our dispatch function and to encapsulate a function to get the new state (getState). When we call this store function we get an JS object with our dispatch function as a method, which has access to state.

Redux works by having an action dispatched, which calls a reducer, and then renders the view.

Using Redux in an React app

To install Redux in my app I type into my console:

npm install --save redux 

npm install --save react-redux

npm install --save redux-thunk

  1. Initialize my store in index.js using createStore Redux function and pass it down to my top-level <App /> container.

To have access to the store in any of our components we import the react-redux function connectinto the component where we want to have access.

If we want some state we can use:

We can access these data as: this.props.whatEverWeWant. We can create our own customised props playing with the data of our store, with the state with have created in the state of our reducer. For example here we have whatEverWeWant only in the state, but if we want a prop like numberOfwhatEverWeWant we don’t modify our reducer, we can add numberOfwhatEverWeWant: state.whatEverWeWant.length in our mapStateToProps and that’s it!

If we want to dispatch an action and update our store we do something like:

Then to be able to debug I have installed redux-devtools-extension and add this code to my index.js:

connect function

connect function listen to changes in the state.

When a change occurs it calls the function mapStateToProps()where we specified the info we want from the state and gives it to us as a prop. We have to write this function ourselves. This function has access to the entire store’s state.

And then we finally specify which component of our app we are providing with this data.

If we don’t give a second argument to connect,(mapDispatchToProps would be the one), connect gives us the prop dispatch for free! This second method allows us to customise how we send actions to our reducer. If it is not for this second argument, our component wouldn’t know anything about Redux and our store.

One pattern is to only connect Container components.

Redux Actions

Actions are POJOs that has a property of type.

We dispatch our action to the store (whit the dispatch method), the store passes the action to the reducer, that checks the type property to see what he has to do, what changes will make to the state. Remember reducer takes two parameters, state and action.

We should wrap our actions into functions, in case these actions have some parts that will need to change or add different payload properties (like a user to the list of user), and we pass those functions to the dispatch method. Those functions are called action creators.

We keep our React application separated from our Redux application by using the Provider component and the connect() function.

We don’t reference our store in our components. mapStateToProps() and mapDispatchToProps() allow us to separate concerns. The first one helps us to manage our state and the second one is an action creator, mapped as a prop. Our components only display state, they don’t manage it.

We pass these two functions to connect(). When connect()' executes it calls the first function, mapStateToProps, and pass it the current state. Then it calls the second function and passes it the dispatch function. The dispatch function takes an action, so don’t forget to import the action :). Then we can access this dispatch function as a prop.

Refactoring these methods.

This is equivalent to:

We can pass an anonymous function as first argument to connect, and we can pass a function, if we do this we have to do it as before, or an object and connect will pass it the dispatch function. If we pass an object, this one needs to contain key/value pairs for each action creator we want to become props. As of JavaScript ES6, when we have an object with a key and value with the same name, we can use the shorthand syntax and write { addItem }.

combineReducers()

It combines the different reducers we pass to it into one single reducer that we pass to our store.

npm

npm (Node Package Manager) is a command line tool and helps organizes and install packages in our JS project.

* Node is a JS runtime, to run JS locally in your computer instead of in a browser.

npm is automatically installed along with Node.js so to check if you already have it in you computer run:

node -v

If a version doesn’t appear you can use the Node Version Manager to install Node.js.

To check the version of npm:

npm -v

To update it:

npm install --global npm

npm works with the package.json file and has a command to create it: npm init

The package.json file includes info about the project and tells to npm which packages are required for the project. When we run npm install in a project with a package.json file, npm downloads and install all packages listed in the file from npmjs.com.

If you are working in a local environment running npm install creates the folder node_modules, with all the downloaded packages.

To install more packages than the listed in the package.json, run:

npm install <name_of_the_package>

 

React

React is a front end web framework built entirely out of JS. We use JSX, an extension of vanilla JS, to write our components.

Why React?

Using components allow us to separate functionality and code.

It has a virtual DOM, to render faster.

React includes Babel that compiles JSX down to React.createElement() calls and Webpack, the module that bundles the JS files of the project.

Easy to create a new react app and run npm install and npm start.

Components

Conceptually, components are like JavaScript functions. They accept arbitrary inputs (called “props”) and return React elements describing what should appear on the screen. –reactjs.org

*React elements are the objects created by React.createElement()

Types of components

  • If props and state are not changing and we don’t need special work updating our component we can use PureComponent.
  • If we don’t need to use state and lifecycle methods we can use a functional component. In order to use state we have to inherit from Component, and functional components don’t do that.

Functional components don’t have state but have props, we have to explicitly pass them as the argument for the function.

We can use object destructuring and extract values from props.

The components are the files written using JSX. You can import one file/component into another component and make it its parent component so its parent can render it inside an element.

Components:

*Always start component names with a capital letter.

*must never modify its own props. For that, use the state.

All React components must act like pure functions with respect to their props. –reactjs

*I would start writing the component as a function component and if class component features, like .state, are necessary, then change it to a class component.

Container and presentation components

So we have talked so far about functional, class and pure components. Container and presentational components are not different types of components, they are a way to organise your react app.

Presentational components usually receive props and display content.

Containers keep more complex logic, dealing with state and usually are class components.

Render a component

In this example I render the App component.

Importing from the node_modules folder and the src folder, exporting and the Component Chain

When a component doesn’t have an export means that is the top of this chain.

*For an optimization of udpating, React recommends using React.PureComponent instead of React.Component. PureComponent doesn’t have access to shouldComponentUpdate because he will check for changes in props and state and update if necessary.

Props and state

Props are arguments passed into React components. They are like function arguments in JS and attributes in HTML. To send the props into a component, we use the same syntax as HTML attributes. React props are read-only. A component can change its own state but not its props. The parent who is passing the props can change them.

Default values for props:

State is similar to props, but it is private and fully controlled by the component. React components has a built-in state object. The state object is where you store property values that belongs to the component. When the state object changes, the component re-renders.

The state object is initialised in the constructor method.

We should call super() in the constructor since we are inheriting from another class via the extends keyword.  We set initial state in the constructor because it runs first.

We can change the state using setState(), which will re-render the component:

When we want to update our state based in the previous state. Never use a this.state inside a setState. We can pass a function to setState that, when called inside setState will be passed the component state from when that setState was called (previous state) and the return value will be the new state (important use return!).

React’s Event System

React uses basic HTML events and wrap them in the SyntheticEvent to make sure events are handled the same way across all browsers.

setState() sets state asynchronously.

Update a nested state

We can not modify props only the state. Every component can modify its own state using setState, but what if a child want to modify the state of its parent? In order to do this we can use a callback. The parent component can pass down a callback function to its child where its state is modified. The child will have access to the cb inside the props being passed to it.

Event pooling

When the event fires, the event data is sent to the callback. If we need to use this data in an asynchronous way we can store it in a variable or we can make the event persistent (event.persist()).

Forms

When you have a form in React you usually want to write a JS function to handle the submission and have access to the form data. There are two different ways to control the form’s data, the controlled and the uncontrolled form,  but the safest is using a controlled form.

How to know if the component is controlled or uncontrolled? If the input has a value, it is a controlled component and if the input has a defaultValue is an uncontrolled component.

Controlled forms store their input values in the state. With a controlled component we can control user input and show errors. How do we add the input data to our state?

  1. Adding a value attribute to our input like <input type="text" name="query" onChange="{this.handleChange} value="{this.state.query}"/> or for radio and checkbox types, the checked attribute:
  2. and then updating our state with the setState method inside an onChange event listener that will fire every time the value of the input changes.

Having the form data in our state means that it is easy to pass them down as props to other component or pass them to a parent component using a function callback supplied in props.

Form with multiple inputs

We can access the event.target attributes of our handleChange function and get different info. For example if we give to our input an attribute name we can access it via event.target.nameand that means that we can create a more abstract handleChange function and use it without having to write a different function to handle the changes for each input of our form, in case we have a form with more than one input like the one in the example. In order to do so we have to make sure that the name value is equal to the key/keys of our state.

Lists

How to render a list of elements:

We should include a key (string) in our list of elements.

A good rule of thumb is that elements inside the map() call need keys. reactjs.org

React component methods

  • render()
  • Error handling during rendering, in a lifecycle method, constructor of any child component:
    • static getDerivedStateFromError()
    • componentDidCatch()
  • Other APIs:
    • setState()
    • forceUpdate()
  • Class properties:
    • defaultProps
    • displayName
  • Instance properties:
    • props
    • state

The render() method is necessary for a class component to be valid, the other ones are optional.

React component lifecycle

Component lifecycle: creation(mounting), updating, and deletion(unmointing).

React has special built-in events relating to the component lifecycle, the lifecycle hooks/methods.

  • Pre-mounting:
    • constructor(). Where we create the initial state of the component.
  • Mounting:
    • static getDerivedStateFromProps(props, state). I gives us access to state and props.
    • render(). It returns JSX so React can insert it into the DOM.
    • componentDidMount(). Where we set up long-running or asynchronous processes such as fetching or updating data.
  • Updating:
    • static getDerivedStateFromProps(props, state). Where we can check state changes prior to an update. Use it when you want to modify the state based in the new props.
    • shouldComponentUpdate(nextProps, nextState). Invoked before the re-render. We can compare here if there are changes in the props or the state and avoid an unnecessary re-rendering.
    • render().Here the next props and the state became available as this.props and this.state. the component gets rendered into React’s virtual DOM.
    • getSnapshotBeforeUpdate(prevProps, prevState). Just before React commits content from its virtual DOM to the actual DOMReturns a snapshot that can be used in the next hook. You can get info like the scroll position.
    • componentDidUpdate(prevProps, prevState, snapshot). We can take some actions here without triggering a re-render of the component, like focusing on a specific form input. Here we have access to the previous and the current props and state and we can use this hook to update any third party libraries if they need to update due to the re-render.
  • Unmounting:
      • componentWillUnmount(). To clear any stuff we set up in componentDidMount.And avoid automatic data fetching for example that we don’t want.

     

Sending fetch requests

We can send a fetch request when the component is mounted, in the componentDidMount hook or we can tie it into an event.

Another way to organise the fetched data is using the container component pattern. Here it is a good link about it.

React Router

React router uses client-side routing, not server-side routing.

With Client-Side routing, it is now the responsibility of the Client-Side-Code to handle the routing, fetching and displaying of the data in the browser instead of the server.

Using pushState(state, title, url).

React and Babel

Babel is a compiler that makes all JS versions, even JSX, and emit a common one.

React and Webpack

Webpack combines different JS files, pre-bundles them together into a single file, to make less http requests to the server.

Reconciliation

React create during the first render the current tree,  that looks like the current DOM, and when updates cause a re-render it creates the workInProgress tree, representing how the DOM will look. React uses a diffing algorithm to check for differences and if necessary uses this second tree to update the current tree and the DOM .

BirthdayCakeCandles

Problem from Hackerrank.

My solution:

 

Mini-Max Sum

Problem from Hackerrank.

My solution:

 

Staircase

Problem from Hackerrank.

My solution:

 

Plus Minus

Problem from Hackerrank.

I was making the mistake of checking if the index was bigger or smaller than zero, instead of checking the value of the integer in that index. I was comparing i instead ,arr[i].

My solution: