Data is a valuable resource used by individuals, organizations, and institutions; it is also crucial to offer sufficient technical security to stop unauthorized users from obtaining these data.
A robust database management system like Appwrite can provide the requirements necessary for safeguarding data. It enables authorized users to contribute new data, update existing data, and remove obsolete data.
This post discusses how to build a Remix application using Appwrite’s out-of-box functionalities to fetch and render data from its database.
Remix is a full-stack React framework used to create web applications. It offers several valuable features, including built-in support for cookies and sessions, server-side rendering, file system-based routing, TypeScript support, and more.
The complete source code of this project is on GitHub. Fork it to get started quickly.
Prerequisite
To comfortably follow along in this article, it would be helpful to have the following:
- Docker Desktop installed on the computer; run the
docker -vcommand to verify that we have Docker installed. If not, install it from the Get Docker documentation. - A basic understanding of JavaScript, React.js, and Remix.
- An Appwrite instance; check out this article on how to set up an instance. Appwrite also supports one-click install on DigitalOcean or Gitpod.
- Node and its package manager,
npm. Run the commandnode -v && npm -vto verify that we have them installed or install them from here.
Getting Started
Project setup and installation
Run the following command in the terminal to create a new Remix application:
npx create-remix@latest <project-name>
The command above triggers a CLI (Command Line Interface) where we can create our Remix application. The image below shows the configuration options the CLI provides:
Then, navigate into the project directory cd and run npm run start to start a development server at https://localhost:3000/ in our browser.
NOTE: above stands for the name of our app, call it any name that makes sense.
Setting up an Appwrite Project
Installing Appwrite
Appwrite is a development platform that provides a powerful API and management console for building backend servers for web and mobile applications.
To use Appwrite in our Remix application, install the Appwrite client-side SDK (Software Development Kit) for web applications.
npm install appwrite
Then, we’ll set up a new Appwrite project by starting an Appwrite instance and navigating to the specified hostname and port http://localhost:80.
NOTE: To set up an Appwrite instance, follow the steps in the article located in Prerequisites.
Creating a New Project
Next, we need to log into our account or create an account if we don’t have one.
On Appwrite’s console, click the Create Project button, input quiz-app as the project name, and click Create.
The project dashboard will appear on the console. Next, copy the Project ID, we’ll use this to set up our Remix application.
Creating a Collection and Attribute
On the left side of the Appwrite Console dashboard, click on the Database tab. Click on the Create Database button to create a new database. Creating a new database will lead us to the Collection page.
Next, we’ll create a collection in our database by clicking the Add Collection button.
After creating a Collection, go to the Update Permissions section on the Settings page. We want to assign a Read Access and Write Access with a role: any value. We can customize these roles later to specify who has access to read or write to our database.
On the Collection dashboard, copy the Collection ID; we’ll need to perform operations on the collection’s documents.
Next, go to the Attributes tab to create the properties we want the document to have. Let’s generate string attributes — options, answers, and questions with a size of 256 bits.
NOTE: The quiz options have four attributes (one, two, three, & four) for our application.
Let’s head to the Documents section and click on Create Document. We want to create a database for our application’s questions, options, and answers.
Building the app component
Open the app/routes/index.jsx file and replace its default syntax with the code snippet below.
// index.jsx
export default function Index() {
return (
<div className="container">
<h1>Remix Science Quiz App</h1>
<p>Easy learning with 10th grade science questions and answers that covers all the important topics.</p>
<button className="quiz-btn">start quiz</button>
</div>
)};
This renders a default home page which will look like this:
Next, we'll create and import a Questions.jsx file into the index.jsx file. This component houses our quiz questions and options. We also want our quiz questions to appear only when we’ve started the quiz. We’ll use a useState variable and conditional rendering to achieve this functionality, where toShow, the useState variable, displays or hides either of the components, as shown below.
//index.jsx
import Questions from "./Questions";
export default function Index() {
const [toShow, setToShow] = useState(true);
return (
<div>
{toShow ? (
<div className="container">
// Default Home Page
</div>
) : (
<Questions />
)}
</div>
)};
Fetching and Rendering Data from Appwrite’s Database
To fetch data from Appwrite’s database, add the code snippet below to our index.jsx file.
// index.jsx
import { Client, Databases } from "appwrite";
export default function Index() {
const [quizQuestions, setQuizQuestions] = useState([""]);
const [toShow, setToShow] = useState(true);
const client = new Client();
const databases = new Databases(client);
client
.setEndpoint("OUR_API_ENDPOINT") // Your API Endpoint
.setProject("OUR_PROJECT_ID"); // Your project ID
const promise = databases.listDocuments( "OUR_DATABASE_ID", "OUR_COLLECTION_ID");
const updateData = () => {
promise.then(
function (response) {
setQuizQuestions(response.documents);
},
function (error) {
console.log(error); // Failure
});
setToShow(false);
};
return (
<div>
{toShow ? (
<div className="container">
<h1>Remix Science Quiz App</h1>
<p> Easy learning with 10th grade science questions and answers that covers all the important topics. </p>
<button className="quiz-btn" onClick={updateData}> start quiz </button>
</div>
) : (
<Questions quizQuestions={quizQuestions} />
)}
</div>
);
}
The code snippet above does the following:
- Create and assign a function that triggers a request to Appwrite’s servers
- Makes a request to Appwrite’s servers to fetch the quiz data and push the fetched data into a
useStatevariable - Export our quiz data to the
Questions.jsxcomponent
NOTE: Get your
API Endpoint,Project ID,[DATABASE_ID],[COLLECTION_ID], and[DOCUMENT_ID]from Appwrite’s console.
Here, we’ll render the data imported from Appwrite. The generated data will be structured so that a user can answer the quiz questions one at a time. To do this, let’s use a useState variable, currentQuestion, to show only the quiz questions and options that match the variable’s value.
// Questions.jsx
const Questions = ({ quizQuestions }) => {
const [currentQuestion, setCurrentQuestion] = useState(0);
const [finalResult, setFinalResult] = useState(true);
return (
<div className="questions">
<div className="section-container">
<h2>Questions {currentQuestion + 1} out of {quizQuestions.length}</h2>
<p>{quizQuestions[currentQuestion].question}?</p>
<div className="section">
<button name="one">{quizQuestions[currentQuestion].one}</button>
<button name="two">{quizQuestions[currentQuestion].two}</button>
<button name="three">{quizQuestions[currentQuestion].three}</button>
<button name="four">{quizQuestions[currentQuestion].four}</button>
</div>
</div>
<button type="button" className="btn">Next ></button>
</div>
This is how the quiz section of our application will look like:
Generating the Quiz Score
Let’s create a function — handleChange, to check whether the option a user clicks on is correct. The function matches the clicked option’s text with the answer from Appwrite’s database. If they both match, we‘ll add a point to our quiz score variable called score.
// Questions.jsx
const Questions = ({ quizQuestions }) => {
const [currentQuestion, setCurrentQuestion] = useState(0);
const [finalResult, setFinalResult] = useState(true);
const [score, setScore] = useState(0);
const handleChange = (e) => {
e.preventDefault();
if (e.target.innerText === quizQuestions[currentQuestion].answer) {
setScore(score + 1);
}
};
return (
<div className="questions">
<div className="section-container">
<h2>Questions {currentQuestion + 1} out of {quizQuestions.length}</h2>
<p>{quizQuestions[currentQuestion].question}?</p>
<div className="section">
<button onClick={handleChange}>{quizQuestions[currentQuestion].one}</button>
<button onClick={handleChange}>{quizQuestions[currentQuestion].two}</button>
<button onClick={handleChange}>{quizQuestions[currentQuestion].three}</button>
<button onClick={handleChange}>{quizQuestions[currentQuestion].four}</button>
</div>
</div>
<button type="button" className="btn">Next ></button>
</div>
Next, we need to switch to the next question and show the quiz score if there aren't any questions left.
// Questions.jsx
const Questions = ({ quizQuestions }) => {
const [currentQuestion, setCurrentQuestion] = useState(0);
const [finalResult, setFinalResult] = useState(true);
const handleSubmit = (e) => {
e.preventDefault();
if (currentQuestion + 1 < quizQuestions.length) {
setCurrentQuestion(currentQuestion + 1);
} else {
setFinalResult(false);
}
};
return (
<div>
{finalResult ? (
<div className="questions">
// Question Section
<button type="button" className="btn" onClick={handleSubmit}>Next ></button>
</div>
) : (
<div className="final">
<p>Your final score is {score} out of {quizQuestions.length}</p>
<button type="button" onClick={() => window.location.reload()}>
reset score!
</button>
</div>
)}
</div>
)};
export default Questions;
Let’s assign a function to the next button. This function first checks if there’s a question to show; if there is, it displays the question, and if there’s not, it shows the quiz score and a button to reset the quiz score.
This is how the application will look after applying the significant configurations:
Conclusion
This article discussed how to use Appwrite’s storage functionality and, more importantly, how to integrate Appwrite into web applications built with Remix.
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