5chan — The 4chan clone with NextJs

5 min readSep 18, 2021

This the continuation of the 5chan project : we’ve already discussed the Design and API
So for the final step I’ll create the frontend.

The flow:

New user opens homepage / app
Gets assigned a random user id until clears data
Generate random Avatars using @dicebar/avatars
Can create posts / delete own posts
Look through posts timeline
Reply to posts

Now, we’ll init a nextjs app and install the dependencies we’ll need:

Chakra-UI — Components
swr — Data fetching
zustand — state management
@dicebear/avatars — generating avatars
formik — manage, validate post create form

# Get the nextjs app template
npx create-next-app 5chan --typescript
cd 5chan
pnpm install
# The chakra-ui UI library, icons for chakra-ui & swr 
pnpm add @chakra-ui/react @emotion/react@^11 @emotion/styled@^11 framer-motion@^4 @chakra-ui/icons swr zustand @dicebear/avatars @dicebear/micah formik

To setup chakra-ui, you’ll have to wrap the app with ChakraProvider like so:

import { AppProps } from 'next/app';
import { ChakraProvider } from '@chakra-ui/react';
import '@/styles/globals.css';export default function MyApp({ Component, pageProps }: AppProps) {
return (
    <ChakraProvider>
        <Component {...pageProps} />
    </ChakraProvider>
    );
}

The types.ts for consistent structures:

// types.ts
//User State
export interface UserStore {
user: User | undefined;
setUser: (user: User) => void;
}
// User Object
export interface User {
id: string;
avatar: string;
}
// Posts
export interface Post {
CreatedAt?: Date;
UpdatedAt?: Date;
DeletedAt?: boolean;
ID?: string;
title: string;
author: string;
body: string;
replies?: Reply[];
}
// Post Reply
export interface Reply {
CreatedAt?: Date;
UpdatedAt?: Date;
DeletedAt?: boolean;
ID?: string;
author: string;
body: string;
postId: string;
}

Generating random user and avatar data then storing them in LocalStorage for later use :

//user.ts
import { customAlphabet } from 'nanoid/async';
import { User } from './types';
import { createAvatar } from '@dicebear/avatars';
import * as style from '@dicebear/micah';const userKey = 'currentUid';const createUser = async (): Promise<User> => {
const nanoid = customAlphabet('0123456789', 10);
const id = await nanoid();
const avatar = createAvatar(style, {
seed: 'id',
dataUri: true,
});
const user: User = { id, avatar };
localStorage.setItem(userKey, JSON.stringify(user));
return user;
};export const getUser = async (): Promise<User> => {
let result = localStorage.getItem(userKey);
let user: User;
if (!result) {
return await createUser();
}
user = JSON.parse(result) as User;
return user;
};

The great thing about zustand is that you don’t have the wrap the entire app inside a context to use it. It can stay away from the UI code as small stores. So it’s easy to use.

//stores.ts
import create from 'zustand';
import { User, UserStore } from './types';export const userStore = create<UserStore>((set) => ({
user: undefined,
set((state) => {
    state.user = user;
    }),
}));

Now the API requests to POST& GET replies:

//replies.ts
import { Reply } from './types';///
export const fetchReplies = async (url: string):Promise<Reply[]> => {
const result = await fetch(url);
if (result.status >= 400) {
    return [];
}
return (await result.json()) as Reply[];
};///
export const postReply = async (reply: Reply): Promise<Reply | undefined> => {
const apiUrl = `${process.env.NEXT_PUBLIC_API_URL!}/api/v1/replies`;
const apiKey = process.env.NEXT_PUBLIC_API_KEY;
if (!apiKey) {
    return;
}
const req: RequestInit = {
method: `POST`,
headers: { 'Content-Type': 'application/json', Authorization: apiKey },
body: JSON.stringify(reply),
};
const result = await fetch(apiUrl, req);
if (result.status >= 400) {
return;
}
return (await result.json()) as Reply;
};

The API calls for POSTing, GET ing & DELETEing posts:

import { Post } from './types';///
export const fetchPosts = async (url: string): Promise<Post[]> => {
const result = await fetch(url);
if (result.status >= 400) {
    return [];
}
return (await result.json()) as Post[];
};export const fetchPostById = async (url: string): Promise<Post | undefined> => {
const result = await fetch(url);
if (result.status >= 400) {
    return;
    }
return (await result.json()) as Post;
};///
export const createPost = async (post: Post): Promise<Post | undefined> => {
const apiUrl = `${process.env.NEXT_PUBLIC_API_URL!}/api/v1/posts`;
const apiKey = process.env.NEXT_PUBLIC_API_KEY;
if (!apiKey) {
    return;
}
const req: RequestInit = {
method: `POST`,
headers: { 'Content-Type': 'application/json', Authorization: apiKey },
body: JSON.stringify({ ...post }),
};
const result = await fetch(apiUrl, req);
if (result.status >= 400) {
    return;
}
    return (await result.json()) as Post;
};///
export const deletePost = async (url: string): Promise<boolean> => {
const apiKey = process.env.NEXT_PUBLIC_API_KEY;
const req: RequestInit = {
method: `DELETE`,
headers: { Authorization: apiKey! },
};
const result = await fetch(url, req);
if (result.status >= 400) {
    return false;
}
return true;
};