What better way to learn how to build pure-JavaScript web applications without the use of a UI framework? While I co-led Sparkbox's Full Stack Developer program, I was tasked with improving and streamlining the apprenticeship curriculum. Enter SparkHero.
SparkHero is an exercise that challenges apprentices to build a JavaScript app with ready-to-go RESTful APIs that show off fan-favorite Marvel and DC characters. It covers all the disciplines previously addressed in ad hoc lessons on building web applications, but in a structured manner that closely resembles the leadership of real client projects. Throughout this two-week exercise, apprentices were tasked with adding new features such as support for fetching data from API endpoints, sorting, and filtering.
This project comes preloaded with three RESTful API endpoints compatible with Netlify serverless functions, Express, Webpack, Jest, Sass, a complete set of linters, and a customized CI/CD pipeline to automate deployments to Netlify for both pull requests and code merged into the production branch.