Sorry if this isn’t the right spot for this question. I’ve been struggling a bit with a (what seems to me) increase in skill level between the beginner algorithm challenges (which were fine) and the ‘Create your local weather app’. In the normal curriculum, the javascript interacting with the DOM (at least that’s what I think it is) isn’t really taught step-by-step, and all of a sudden you’re supposed to get json and display it into an html page. The “JSON api and Ajax” piece sort of talks about it a bit, but the code is very much already there (versus teaching you how to properly have JS and HTML interact with each other).
Am I missing something? Is there a good resource to really understand how to have JS talk to HTML?
I am currently on the intermediate level algorithms, I have done all the intermediate front end projects.
When I got to the first one, which is the Quote generator, I had some difficulties too, It is normal.
FCC emphasis the need to search and ask, most of the things you need are within the site´s forum and course.
If you having difficulties in communicating with the DOM I suggest you take a good look back at the AJAX and API tutorials maybe you didn’t really comprehend the true mechanics behind it.
Now I had some major difficulties with the Weather App because there is a problem with the API recommended by FCC, due to some issues related to fetching information from not secure sites, furthermore I was able to overcome this issue by searching and finding out there are two other API which we can use.
The one I used was from Darksky.
Cheer on mate, learn to code is not an easy task, It took me a week to do the Weather App due to these difficulties, if you are struggling it’s because you really trying , then continue because you will strive.
I totally felt this pain when I reached that section of challenges as well. I had been zinging along through everything and thought I was understanding things pretty well too, and really seemed to hang up when I got to those challenges. I think the shorter lessons are a lot easier when all the instructions and examples are right there on the same page and all you have to do is add a few lines of code. I found starting from scratch to be intimidating.
I did a ton of googling and outside research on AJAX when I got to this section. I also researched and studied outside sources on JQuery since that came so early in the lessons. You might want to refresh yourself on selectors and replacing text using them.
Finally, I think the thing that helped me the most in these sections was to break everything down into pieces. If I think about the whole project at once, my brain freezes and I can’t proceed. But if I break the project up into finite chunks, then I am much more able to solve it one piece at a time. Use console.log or some other output method when you are trying new techniques to make sure that your results are what you intended. If not, keep tweaking until they are, then move on to the next piece. Hang in there, and if you spend a week just reading and researching to get your footing, that’s probably ok!