ES6 Isomorphic Flux/ReactJS Boilerplate

A wonderfull boilerplate for Flux/ReactJS isomorphic applications, running on Koa.

Libraries Included

TL;DR

Use with iojs^1.8.0 or nodejs^0.12.0, clone the repo, npm install and npm run dev.

Learn React (react-prime-draft), learn Flux and Alt (alt guide).

Wrap you async actions into promises, send them to altResolver with altResolver.resolve(xxx) for async server side rendering (see app/actions/users.js:31).

Build for production with npm run build, don't forget to run the tests before npm test.

Concepts

Koa will be our server for the server side rendering, we use alt for our Flux architecture and react-router for routing in our app.

With iso as helper we can populate alt flux stores before the first rendering and have a complete async isomorphic React application.

Run this boilerplate, you will see the server is fetching some fake users and will populate the UserStore with this data. Koa will render the first markup, serve the JavaScript and then it will entirely run on the client.

Flux

We use alt instance as Flux implementation.

We need to use instances for isomorphic applications, to have a unique store/actions per requests on the server.

On the client, Flux is initialized in app/main.js and sent to our first React Component via props (this.props.flux). Everytime you want to uses stores or actions in a component you need to give it access through props.

On the server, it's similar but Flux is initialized in server/router.jsx. The instance is sent to alt-resolver for rendering components with the correct props.

Learn more about alt instances in the alt documentation.

Internationalization (i18n)

We use react-intl for internationalization, it uses browser implementation of Intl. For older browser and for node, we load the polyfill.

Support localized strings (see data/en.js)
Support localized dates, times and currencies.

Lang files and Intl polyfill are compiled into webpack chunks, for lazy-loading depending the locale of the user.

If user changes locale, it is saved into a cookie _lang and used by the server to know the locale of rendering. If there's no _lang cookie, server will rely on Accept-Language request header. Server will set <html lang='x'> on rendering.

Thank's to gpbl/react-locale-hot-switch for the implementation example!

Async data-fetching

Alt-resolver is the magic thing about the boilerplate, it will be our tool for resolving promises (data-fetching) before server side rendering.

Wrap data-fetching requests from actions into promises and send them to altResolver like:

fetch() {
  const promise = (resolve) => {
    request
      .get('http://example.com/api/users')
      .end((response) => {
        // fire new action to send data to store
        this.actions.fetchSuccess(response.body);
        return resolve();
      });
  };
  // Send the `promise` to altResolver
  this.alt.resolve(promise);
}

Call the fetch action from component in the componentWillMount method:

propTypes: {
  flux: React.PropTypes.object.isRequired
},
componentWillMount() {
  const usersActions = this.props.flux.getActions('users');
  return usersActions.fetch();
}

On browser side, the rendering won't be stopped and will resolve the promise instantly.

On server side, altResolver.render will fire a first render to collect all the promises needed for a complete rendering. It will then resolve them, and try to re-render the application for a complete markup.

Open app/actions/users.js, app/utils/alt-resolver.js, app/stores/users.js for more information about data-fetching.

How to `require()` images on server side

On client with webpack, you can directly require() images for your images DOM element like:

<img src={require('images/logo.png')} />

Webpack will load them through the url-loader and if it's too big it will sent through file-loader for minification/compilation. The results is an image with a new filename for cache busting.

But on node, require() an image will just throw an exception. There's an util for loading image on server side to achieve this:

import imageResolver from 'utils/image-resolver'

let image;
// On browser just require() the image as usual
if (process.env.BROWSER) {
  image = require('images/logo.png');
}
else {
  image = imageResolver('images/logo.png');
}

...
render () {
  return (
    <img src={image} />
  );
}
...

The utils/image-resolver with match the original image name with the compiled one.

Voilà! You can require() images on server side too.

Installation / How-to

I recommend to use io.js to take advantages of ES6 without --harmony flag on NodeJS.

It's super easy to do with nvm:

$ nvm install iojs
$ nvm use iojs
$ nvm alias default iojs (to make node default to iojs)

But it works well with nodejs^0.12.0 as well :)

After that, you will just need to clone the repo and install dependancies:

$ git clone -o upstream https://github.com/iam4x/isomorphic-flux-boilerplate.git app
$ cd app && npm install

(Don't forget to add your remote origin: $ git remote origin [email protected]:xxx/xxx.git)

Run the project in development:

$ npm run dev

Open your browser to http://localhost:3002 and you will see the magic happens! Try to disable JavaScript in your browser, you will still be able to navigate between pages of the application. Enjoy the power of isomorphic applications!

(Note: ports 3000-3002 are needed, you can change this with $ PORT=3050 npm run dev it will run on 3050-3052)

Run tests

$ npm test will run the tests once
$ ./node_modules/.bin/karma start will watch for changes and run the tests on change

Build project:

Just run $ npm run build, it will produce these tasks:

Run tests from test/spec/**/*.jsx
Concat & minify styles to /dist/app-[hash].css
Concat & minify scripts to /dist/js/app-[hash].js

Update the boilerplate

You can fetch the upstream branch and merge it into your master:

$ git checkout master
$ git fetch upstream
$ git merge upstream/master
$ npm install

Run in production

Build the project first:

$ npm run build

Then start the koa server:

$ NODE_ENV=production node server/index.js (iojs)
$ NODE_ENV=production node --harmony server/index.js (nodejs 0.12.x)

You can also use processes.json to run the application with PM2 Monitor on your production server (customize it for your use):

$ pm2 start processes.json

Learn more

Common errors

Error: `libsass` bindings not found. Try reinstalling `node-sass`

Be sure you are running with iojs > 1.7.0 (check node version node -v)
Delete node_modules mv node_modules /tmp (mv is much faster than rm -rf)
Clear npm cache npm cache clear
Build node-sass for your system $ npm install node-sass
Re-install modules npm install

This is an issue with node-sass it is reported almost everywhere on the internet.

Windows 7:

On windows for building node-sass before running the commands you need:

Install python27 and set it your path (http://stackoverflow.com/a/6318188)
Install Visual Studio Express 2013 (download)

Windows 8:

There's an issue with node-sass #870 open.

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isomorphic-flux-boilerplate's Introduction

ES6 Isomorphic Flux/ReactJS Boilerplate

Libraries Included

TL;DR

Concepts

Flux

Internationalization (i18n)

Async data-fetching

How to require() images on server side

Installation / How-to

Run the project in development:

Run tests

Build project:

Update the boilerplate

Run in production

Learn more

Common errors

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How to `require()` images on server side