Book Haven is an app to keep track of all your favorite books. I got the idea to make the app because I have so many books I like to recommend to others but can’t always remember the titles or the author’s name. This app takes care of that problem by storing your books in a list. You can login to the app after you create an account and add a book with a title, author and a short description. The app still needs some tweaking but it’s fuctional.
This app was the toughest project I’ve done for Flatiron School. The concept that was hardest for me to grasp was where the data was in the React/Redux process and what made it do what it did. It was only when I read the Redux docs did I understand the flow of props, state, mapStateToProps, connect and store. It also helped me with learning how Redux took data and changed it using actions and reducers. I’ll still be adding some more CSS and maybe more features to the app to make it easier to use in the future.
Mistakes I’ve Made
I made the mistake of thinking I could do this quickly because I understood a lot of ES6 JavaScript and components made things easier to find. I was wrong. If I had to do this over again, I’d of slowed way down and taken my time with each concept until I understood it before moving on to the next one. React + Redux has a lot of moving parts and is similar to the inner workings of a clock with one glaring exception. . .you can see the inner workings of a clock when you take the top off. Not so with React + Redux. You see all the parts but don’t really know what they’re doing unless you really pay attention. So my advice would be slow down and study hard before you write any code for your project. And good luck!