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jQuery Workshop

Prerequisites

Be sure to have students download and install Sublime Text Editor, any version is okay. Also have them download the code from GitHub:

Students should come in with basic knowledge of:

  • HTML and CSS
  • Functions (from any language)
  • Variables (from any language)

Outline

The goal of the workshop is to create a message system similar to Twitter's "Direct Messages". Instructors should demonstrate the working code by substituting the main.js file for solution.js (in the index.html page) and then running the code.

Students will learn

  • Document Readiness for JavaScript
  • jQuery DOM manipulation
  • jQuery Events
  • Use of modular functions
  • AJAX basics

Instruction

Introduction (20 Mins)

Introduce the students to the HTML they will be working with and how we're including jQuery and our own main.js file from the HTML file. It might be nice to create some hard-coded messages (<div class="message">) to show how the new DOM will be created

Note that there are two types of messages that can be created:

<div class="message other">message text goes here</div>
<div class="message self">message text goes here</div>

"Self" means messages that we created which will show up as blue. "Other" means messages that the other person has created which will show up green. Messages without self or other classes will be displayed with a white background and gray text. This way we can see we did something wrong.

Document Ready (5 Mins)

The main.js file has just enough code to setup jQuery's "Document Readiness". Briefly explain the concept but don't worry about getting into details of anonymous functions and DOM readiness.

Functions (30 Mins)

The first goal of instruction is to explain functions. Create a function called makeMessage() and call it to show some output

var makeMessage = function() {
	console.log('it was called');
}

makeMessage();

Note that code examples in this document will exclude the "Document Rediness" anonymous function.

Further explain arguments and parameters as necessary.

jQuery Essentials (30 mins)

Teach how jQuery works at a fundamental level:

  • $('subject').action()

Practice removing and editing existing DOM:

$('.message').remove();
$('button').remove();
$('message').removeClass('other');
$('message').addClass('self');

Then practice creating new DOM and appending it to existing DOM:

$('.thread').append('Hello World');
$('.thread').append('<div>Hello World</div>');
$('.thread').append('<div class="message self">Hello World</div>');

DOM Creation (10 mins)

Use the knowledge they gained from creating DOM and change the function we created to append new DOM:

var makeMessage = function() {
	$('thread').append('<div class="message self">Hello World</div>');
}

makeMessage();

Better Dom Creation and function arguments (20 Mins)

Explain that by creating the new DOM this way, we can chain methods onto the new div and therefore it's easier to create something dynamic from our arguments. Be sure to explain:

  • Function arguments in general
  • Creating new DOM is different from selecting existing DOM
  • $('<div>') vs $('div')
  • Method Chaining
var makeMessage = function(message, who) {

	var html = $('<div>').addClass('message').addClass(who).text(message);

	$('thread').append(html);
	
}

makeMessage('Hello World', 'self');

Events (30 mins)

Start some new code for the button click event:

$('.submit').on('click', function() {
	console.log('Click');
});

Teach the students all the parts and console log a message to show that the code is working.

Next, get the message that was typed into the textarea field

$('.submit').on('click', function() {
	var message = $('textarea').val();
	console.log(message);
});

Explain that some methods are getters and setters. In this case, since we're calling val() without arguments, it's a getter and we can receive the value into a variable.

Then explain how it can be a setter too. This way we can reset the textarea to empty when we have the value:

$('.submit').on('click', function() {
	var message = $('textarea').val();
	$('textarea').val('')
	console.log(message);
});

Now we can conveniently call our makeMessage method from before:

$('.submit').on('click', function() {
	var message = $('textarea').val();
	$('textarea').val('')
	makeMessage(message, 'self');
});

Server

If there's time, then we can explain how this "server" works. Otherwise the students can just copy it from the solution.

setInterval(function() {

	// Get a random number
	var random = Math.floor(Math.random() * 3);

	// Get the server data
	$.get('server.json', function(data) {
		makeMessage(data.messages[random], 'other');
	});

}, 5000);