Hi again!

Another month, another newsletter, and this issue is action-packed. Since our last issue, many of Redwood's core features have really taken shape: Storybook, Testing, Diagnostics, Studio, and not to mention, the launch of two in-production Redwood apps! Who ever said that Redwood wasn't ready for production? Well, we did! But you guys continue to defy our expectations; truly, well done!

As always, our goal is to help you use Redwood better. In that spirit, we held our first public drop-in meetup a couple weeks ago. If you missed it, don't worry—we've got another one coming up tomorrow (Thursday) starting at 17:30 UTC (10:30am Pacific). More details here. We hope to see you there!

Best,

Dom and the entire RedwoodJS team

Highlights

Storybook Integration —

Storybook is finally here! We love the workflow storybook enables. Our ideal development flow starts with Storybook entries and Jest tests, making it easy for you to do the Right Thing™. And since our generators create both, it really is that easy. Read the announcement for more, and stay tuned because we have something really special coming (hint: it has something to do with seamless mocking).

Redwood Diagnostics —

Some errors are specific to Redwood apps (e.g. having more than one "notfound" Route). Things like ESLint can't catch errors like these—they don't have any notion of what the correct structure of a Redwood app is. That's why Aldo Bucchi made a tool that does: Redwood's diagnostics CLI command lints your Redwood app for structural misalignments. It's powered by @redwoodjs/structure, which is also the amazing work of Aldo, and something incredible in its own right: @redwoodjs/structure (approximately) models a Redwood app as an AST. Think of it like Babel, but just for RedwoodJS!

Prisma's Data Guide —

New to databases, or just feeling like you could use a refresher? Prisma's Data Guide is your all-in-one resource. Learn about databases, their internals, how they work, and how to choose the right one and use it to its full potential.

RedwoodJS Env Validator —

Environment variables are tricky, especially in production, and especially if you don't read the docs. Like many of us, David Thyresson wasn't too keen on having to keep constantly-changing environment variables in sync. So he did something awesome about it: he made a Netlify Build Plugin! Check out his forum post for more.

isBusy —

Hey, are you busy? With isBusy.app, you'll never have to answer that question again; just let your free-forever personal status page answer it for you. Mark Thomas made isBusy.app with Redwood and said he had great fun doing so. He even did a Q&A on the forum, where he answered questions about a range of topics, from GoTrue to databases.

Testing Update: API —

Testing for a Redwood app's API side is ready for action. Now you can test both sides of your redwood app (no more excuses!). Moreover, you can also dynamically configure Jest per side. Testing in redwood is almost feature complete. Look forward to updates to our Generators' testing templates, and of course, docs.

Tape.sh —

Sharing your app's progress is so important but such a hassle. Enter Tape.sh: with their hassle-free CLI, Tape.sh makes sharing your iOS and Android WIPs as easy as can be. Not only did they make it with Redwood, but they also made Redwood better! Check out Taphe.sh-mastermind Daniel Choudhury's amazing forum post on how he and his team setup prerendering in a Redwood app with react-snap.

Prisma Studio —

v0.13.0 brought you another one of Prisma's database tools: Prisma Studio. Prisma Studio is a "visual editor" for your database. If you've ever wanted to just look at your data, you're going to love Prisma Studio. Siddhant Sinha had a great presentation at Prisma Day 2 walking through Studio and all of its features. Be sure to watch till the end, where he demos its built-in REPL. It's a great way to get the hang of your Prisma Client.

Prisma Studio Walkthrough

Snippets

Automatic Form Type Coercion —

Forms got another huge win for DX: thanks to Tobbe Lundberg, Redwood Forms now automatically coerce their values to the corresponding Prisma data type (see the updated docs). Do you like building forms yet?

useLocation —

if you want to get the URL, now you can with the Router's useLocation hook. Thanks to Terris Kremer for this one (#756). He even provided an example for us:

Cell Query Operation Names —

It's a good practice to give your GraphQL operations (i.e. queries and mutations) a name. And now that good practice is built-in: the Cell Generator names your Cell's query operation (and Redwood's diagnostics command complains if it's not there—now that's coverage).

SDL Generators Fixes —

There were two inconsistencies with the SDL and Services Generators: 1) the array syntax was Prisma's instead of GraphQL's (#772), and 2) the resolvers associated with object fields weren't named correctly (#813). Mads Rosenberg fixed both! Generating your SDL and Services is much smoother now.

Upcoming

Public Drop-in Meetup —

We were blown-away by the turnout at the first public drop-in meetup, so we quickly scheduled another one, and it's right around the corner: this Thursday, July 30th, at 10:30am PT. We heard your feedback, so we're splitting the meetup into two 45-minute halves. Join when you can and for as long as you can. And hang out after its over for our afterparty! Registration is required (but totally free), so be sure to sign up—see David's forum post for all the details. And if there are any topics you'd like to see, let David know there. But most of all, feel free to hop in!