Write Web Apps with Dart Develop and Design Jack Murphy WWW.PEACHPIT.COM Write Web Apps with Dart: Develop and Design Jack Murphy Peachpit Press www.peachpit.com To report errors, please send a note to errata@peachpit.com Peachpit Press is a division of Pearson Education Copyright © 2016 by John Murphy Senior Editor: Karyn Johnson Development Editor: Robyn G Thomas Production Editor: David Van Ness Copyeditor and Proofreader: Scout Festa Compositor: Danielle Foster Indexer: Valerie Haynes Perry Interior Design: Mimi Heft Cover Design: Aren Straiger Notice of Rights All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher For information on getting permission for reprints and excerpts, contact permissions@peachpit.com Notice of Liability The information in this book is distributed on an “As Is” basis without warranty While every precaution has been taken in the preparation of the book, neither the author nor Peachpit shall have any liability to any person or entity with respect to any loss or damage caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by the instructions contained in this book or by the computer software and hardware products described in it Trademarks Many of the designations used by manufacturers and sellers to distinguish their products are claimed as trademarks Where those designations appear in this book, and Peachpit was aware of a trademark claim, the designations appear as requested by the owner of the trademark All other product names and services identified throughout this book are used in editorial fashion only and for the benefit of such companies with no intention of infringement of the trademark No such use, or the use of any trade name, is intended to convey endorsement or other affiliation with this book ISBN-13: 978-0-134-21499-3 ISBN-10: 0-134-21499-4 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed and bound in the United States of America To my charismatic and beautiful wife, Katelyn Acknowledgments Behind every author is an amazing team of individuals who provide everything from technical feedback to emotional encouragement Writing about a young language and bleeding-edge frameworks definitely didn’t make this book easy for anyone I want to take a moment to thank all the folks from Peachpit Press: Robyn Thomas for providing timely edits and her always kind words, Scout Festa for skillfully editing my text, Cliff Colby for putting this fantastic team together in the first place, and Karyn Johnson for seeing the project over the finish line And a special thanks goes out to Jonathan Hart for being a consistent questioning voice when providing technical edits and feedback On the language side, I want to thank the folks over at Google for developing Dart in the first place It’s such a wonderful language to work with, and the Dart community has been such a welcoming ecosystem to poke around in and learn from I hope this book helps attract even more Dartisans who can contribute to the vibrant ecosystem Finally, I want to thank my new wife for putting up with me writing a book and, at the end, for dealing with me attempting to finish this book the week of our wedding Author Bio Jack Murphy is a seasoned start-up technology product- and software-engineering specialist with a full-stack development and UI/UX background He focuses on front-end client architecture for complex interactive applications Jack has comprehensive industry experience as a UI-IXD/product designer along with a deep full-stack software engineering expertise Jack is currently the vice president of engineering at Augmate, where his team is attempting to facilitate the adoption of wearable technology in enterprise environments His role allows him to work with numerous types of emerging hardware devices, including smart eyewear, smart watches, and beacon technologies Previously, his work focused on browser game development, including Idle Worship, Diner Dash, and SmartyCard He has passion for design and technology, and he uses both to create rich, engaging, and dynamic user experiences for tech products Contents Introduction Welcome to Dart Part I The Dart Language and Ecosystem CHAPTER 1 DART AND THE HISTORY OF BROWSER Languages The Web and Open Standards JavaScript Deficits Modern Alternatives ECMAScript 4 Dash Memo Google’s Market Strategy Summary CHAPTER 2 UP AND RUNNING WITH DART Installing the Dart SDK Dart Environmental Variables IntelliJ IDEA Editor Optional Homebrew Summary CHAPTER 3 INTRODUCTION TO THE DART LANGUAGE Creating Your First Dart Project Using Functions in Dart Dart Objects and Maps Statements and Control Structures Errors on assert() Collections and Iterators Numbers Summary CHAPTER 4 OBJECT STRUCTURES IN DART Variables Lexical Scope Classes Class Constructors Constants Class Inheritance Polymorphism Abstract Methods Super Constructors Interfaces Mixins Summary CHAPTER 5 PACKAGES AND LIBRARIES Your First Library Visibility and Privacy part and part of Packages and pubspec.yaml Named Package Imports Summary CHAPTER 6 EVENT LOOPS AND ASYNCHRONOUS PROGRAMMING Concurrent Computing Paradigm Futures, Completers, and Streams Streams Event Loop Async Summary Part II Full-Stack App Development with Dart CHAPTER 7 PLANNING THE APPLICATION Fictitious Company Background Feature Requests Data Entities Architecture Choices Summary CHAPTER 8 INTRODUCTION TO MONGODB Relational vs NoSQL Databases Why Not Database X? What Is MongoDB? Installing MongoDB The Mongo Client Summary CHAPTER 9 MONGO DART Setting Up Your Project Downloading and Installing Mongo Dart Packages Exposing Database Credentials Seeding Data in Dart Reading a File from the File System Converting to JSON Connecting to Mongo from Dart Verifying the Data Summary CHAPTER 10 DATA MODELING USING DARTSON Why Dartson Mongo Pooling Dartson Serialization Creating a MongoModel with CRUD Summary CHAPTER 11 WEBSERVER AND MIDDLEWARE Shelf Setting Up a Shelf Example Adding Middleware Adding Routing Serving Static Assets Using Multiple Handlers Summary CHAPTER 12 API ROUTING, REQUESTS, AND RESPONSES Modeling Your Ticketing Domain Implementing Controllers Handling Routes Summary CHAPTER 13 UNIT TESTING YOUR CODE What Is Unit Testing? Jasmine via Guinness Setting Up Guinness Composition of a Guinness Test Testing Mongo Summary CHAPTER 14 A WEB PROJECT WITH DART Planning for Front-End Development Interacting with HTML and the DOM Querying the DOM Building the Landing Page Summary CHAPTER 15 INTRODUCTION TO ANGULAR 2 DART The History of AngularJS and Angular Dart TypeScript Developer Preview Warning Angular 2 Overview Summary Congratulations! Index ONLINE CHAPTERS CHAPTER 16 ANGULAR COMPONENT IMPLEMENTATION AND BUSINESS LOGIC (AVAILABLE ONLINE) CHAPTER 17 DEPLOYING TO PRODUCTION SERVERS (AVAILABLE ONLINE) See page xiii in the Introduction for how to access the online chapters .. .Write Web Apps with Dart Develop and Design Jack Murphy WWW .PEACHPIT. COM Write Web Apps with Dart: Develop and Design Jack Murphy Peachpit Press www .peachpit. com To report errors, please send a note to errata @peachpit. com... The dart- sdk contains several folders, files, applications, and more: bin contains executable files for developing with Dart dart is the Google Dart VM dart2 js is the Dart JavaScript transpiler dartanalyzer is a Dart static analysis tool... asynchronous programming with Dart Part II, “Full-Stack App Development with Dart, ” takes you through a hands-on approach to building a full-stack application using Dart for both client- and serverside processing