Book Image

Elevating React Web Development with Gatsby

Book Image

Elevating React Web Development with Gatsby

Overview of this book

Gatsby is a powerful React static site generator that enables you to create lightning-fast web experiences. With the latest version of Gatsby, you can combine your static content with server-side rendered and deferred static content to create a fully rounded application. Elevating React Web Development with Gatsby provides a comprehensive introduction for anyone new to GatsbyJS and will help you get up to speed in no time. Complete with hands-on tutorials and projects, this easy-to-follow guide starts by teaching you the core concepts of GatsbyJS. You'll then discover how to build performant, accessible, and scalable websites with the GatsbyJS framework. Once you've worked through the practical projects in the book, you'll be able to build anything from a personal website to large-scale applications with authentication and make your site rise through those SEO rankings. By the end of this Gatsby development book, you'll be well-versed in every aspect of the tool's performance and accessibility and have learned how to build client websites that your users will love.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
1
Part 1: Getting Started
7
Part 2: Going Live
12
Part 3: Advanced Concepts

Sourcing data from local files

In this section, we will learn how to source and query data from local files. As we mentioned previously, when we say local files, we are referring to files located alongside the code in our repository.

Site metadata

A great place to store small reusable pieces of data is within the gatsby-config.js file. Gatsby exposes the siteMetadata property to the data layer so that you can retrieve it throughout your application. In the context of our website, I would suggest storing your website address, your name, your role, and a short bio here. If this is implemented consistently, whenever any of these pieces of information change, you can change the field once in siteMetadata and see the change reflected across your whole site.

Tip

gatsby-config.js is a file that you will often find growing quite large as you expand your Gatsby projects. To try and keep things ordered, try and reserve your siteMetadata for a handful of small strings. If you are...