This starter kit is designed to get you up and running with a bunch of awesome new front-end technologies, all on top of a configurable, feature-rich webpack build system that's already setup to provide hot reloading, CSS modules with Sass support, unit testing, code coverage reports, bundle splitting, and a whole lot more.
The primary goal of this project is to remain as unopinionated as possible. Its purpose is not to dictate your project structure or to demonstrate a complete sample application, but to provide a set of tools intended to make front-end development robust, easy, and, most importantly, fun. Check out the full feature list below!
- Requirements
- Features
- Getting Started
- Usage
- Structure
- Webpack
- Server
- Styles
- Testing
- Utilities
- Deployment
- Troubleshooting
Node ^4.0.0
or ^5.0.0
(npm3 recommended).
- React (
^0.14.0
)- Includes react-addons-test-utils (
^0.14.0
)
- Includes react-addons-test-utils (
- Redux (
^3.0.0
)- react-redux (
^4.0.0
) - redux-devtools
- use
npm run dev:nw
to display in a separate window.
- use
- redux-thunk middleware
- react-redux (
- react-router (
^1.0.0
) - redux-simple-router (
^0.0.10
) - Webpack
- CSS modules!
- sass-loader
- postcss-loader with cssnano for style autoprefixing and minification
- Pre-configured folder aliases and globals
- Separate vendor-only bundle for common dependencies
- CSS extraction during production builds
- Loader support for fonts and images
- Express
- webpack-dev-middleware
- webpack-hot-middleware
- Karma
- Mocha w/ Chai, Sinon-Chai, and Chai-as-Promised
- PhantomJS
- Code coverage reports
- Babel
react-transform-hmr
for hot reloadingreact-transform-catch-errors
withredbox-react
for more visible error reporting- Uses babel runtime rather than inline transformations
- ESLint
- Uses Airbnb's ESLint config (with some softened rules)
- Includes separate test-specific
.eslintrc
to work with Mocha and Chai
Just clone the repo and install the necessary node modules:
$ git clone https://github.com/davezuko/react-redux-starter-kit.git
$ cd react-redux-starter-kit
$ npm install # Install Node modules listed in ./package.json (may take a while the first time)
$ npm start # Compile and launch
Before delving into the descriptions for each available npm script, here's a brief summary of the three which will most likely be your bread and butter:
- Doing live development? Use
npm start
to spin up the dev server. - Compiling the application to disk? Use
npm run compile
. - Deploying to an environment?
npm run deploy
can help with that.
NOTE: This package makes use of debug to improve your debugging experience. To see all starter kit messages during the build process, set the DEBUG
environment variable to kit:*
(e.g. DEBUG=kit:* npm start
).
Great, now that introductions have been made here's everything in full detail:
npm start
- Spins up express server to serve your app atlocalhost:3000
. HMR will be enabled in development.npm run compile
- Compiles the application to disk (~/dist
by default).npm run dev:nw
- Same asnpm start
, but opens the redux devtools in a new window.npm run dev:no-debug
- Same asnpm start
but disables redux devtools.npm run test
- Runs unit tests with Karma and generates a coverage report.npm run test:dev
- Runs Karma and watches for changes to re-run tests; does not generate coverage reports.npm run lint
- Runs ESLint against your source code.npm run lint:tests
- Runs ESLint against your tests.npm run deploy
- Runs linter, tests, and then, on success, compiles your application to disk.
NOTE: Deploying to a specific environment? Make sure to specify your target NODE_ENV
so webpack will use the correct configuration. For example: NODE_ENV=production npm run compile
will compile your application with ~/build/webpack/production.js
.
Basic project configuration can be found in ~/config/index.js
. Here you'll be able to redefine your src
and dist
directories, add/remove aliases, tweak your vendor dependencies, and more. For the most part, you should be able to make changes in here without ever having to touch the webpack build configuration. If you need environment-specific overrides, create a file with the name of target NODE_ENV
prefixed by an _
in ~/config
(see ~/config/_production.js
for an example).
Common configuration options:
dir_src
- application source code base pathdir_dist
- path to build compiled application toserver_host
- hostname for the express serverserver_port
- port for the express servercompiler_css_modules
- whether or not to enable CSS modulescompiler_source_maps
- whether or not to generate source mapscompiler_vendor
- packages to separate into to the vendor bundle
The folder structure provided is only meant to serve as a guide, it is by no means prescriptive. It is something that has worked very well for me and my team, but use only what makes sense to you.
.
├── bin # Build/Start scripts
├── build # All build-related configuration
│ └── webpack # Environment-specific configuration files for webpack
├── config # Project configuration settings
├── server # Express application (uses webpack middleware)
│ └── app.js # Server application entry point
├── src # Application source code
│ ├── actions # Redux action creators
│ ├── components # Generic React Components (generally Dumb components)
│ ├── containers # Components that provide context (e.g. Redux Provider)
│ ├── layouts # Components that dictate major page structure
│ ├── reducers # Redux reducers
│ ├── routes # Application route definitions
│ ├── store # Redux store configuration
│ ├── utils # Generic utilities
│ ├── views # Components that live at a route
│ └── app.js # Application bootstrap and rendering
└── tests # Unit tests
TL;DR: They're all components.
This distinction may not be important for you, but as an explanation: A Layout is something that describes an entire page structure, such as a fixed navigation, viewport, sidebar, and footer. Most applications will probably only have one layout, but keeping these components separate makes their intent clear. Views are components that live at routes, and are generally rendered within a Layout. What this ends up meaning is that, with this structure, nearly everything inside of Components ends up being a dumb component.
The webpack compiler configuration is located in ~/build/webpack
. Here you'll find configurations for each environment; development
, production
, and development_hot
exist out of the box. These configurations are selected based on your current NODE_ENV
, with the exception of development_hot
which will always be used during live development.
Note: There has been a conscious decision to keep development-specific configuration (such as hot-reloading) out of .babelrc
. By doing this, it's possible to create cleaner development builds (such as for teams that have a dev
-> stage
-> production
workflow) that don't, for example, constantly poll for HMR updates.
So why not just disable HMR? Well, as a further explanation, enabling react-transform-hmr
in .babelrc
but building the project without HMR enabled (think of running tests with NODE_ENV=development
but without a dev server) causes errors to be thrown, so this decision also alleviates that issue.
You can redefine which packages to treat as vendor dependencies by editing compiler_vendor
in ~/config/index.js
. These default to:
[
'history',
'react',
'react-redux',
'react-router',
'redux-simple-router',
'redux'
]
As mentioned in features, the default webpack configuration provides some globals and aliases to make your life easier. These can be used as such:
// current file: ~/src/views/some/nested/View.js
import SomeComponent from '../../../components/SomeComponent'; // without alias
import SomeComponent from 'components/SomeComponent'; // with alias
Available aliases:
actions => '~/src/actions'
components => '~/src/components'
constants => '~/src/constants'
containers => '~/src/containers'
layouts => '~/src/layouts'
reducers => '~/src/reducers'
routes => '~/src/routes'
services => '~/src/services'
store => `~/src/store`
styles => '~/src/styles'
utils => '~/src/utils'
views => '~/src/views'
These are global variables available to you anywhere in your source code. If you wish to modify them, they can be found as the globals
key in ~/config/index.js
.
True when process.env.NODE_ENV
is development
True when process.env.NODE_ENV
is production
True when the compiler is run with --debug
(any environment).
This starter kit comes packaged with an Express server. It's important to note that the sole purpose of this server is to provide webpack-dev-middleware
and webpack-hot-middleware
for hot module replacement. Using a custom Express app in place of webpack-dev-server will hopefully make it easier for users to extend the starter kit to include functionality such as back-end API's, isomorphic/universal rendering, and more -- all without bloating the base boilerplate. Because of this, it should be noted that the provided server is not production-ready. If you're deploying to production, take a look at the deployment section.
Both .scss
and .css
file extensions are supported out of the box and are configured to use CSS Modules. After being imported, styles will be processed with PostCSS for minification and autoprefixing, and will be extracted to a .css
file during production builds.
NOTE: If you're importing styles from a base styles directory (useful for generic, app-wide styles), you can make use of the styles
alias, e.g.:
// current file: ~/src/components/some/nested/component/index.jsx
import 'styles/core.scss'; // this imports ~/src/styles/core.scss
Furthermore, this styles
directory is aliased for sass imports, which further eliminates manual directory traversing; this is especially useful for importing variables/mixins.
Here's an example:
// current file: ~/src/styles/some/nested/style.scss
// what used to be this (where base is ~/src/styles/_base.scss):
@import '../../base';
// can now be this:
@import 'base';
To add a unit test, simply create a .spec.js
file anywhere in ~/tests
. Karma will pick up on these files automatically, and Mocha and Chai will be available within your test without the need to import them.
Coverage reports will be compiled to ~/coverage
by default. If you wish to change what reporters are used and where reports are compiled, you can do so by modifying coverage_reporters
in ~/config/index.js
.
This boilerplate comes with two simple utilities (thanks to StevenLangbroek) to help speed up your Redux development process. In ~/client/utils
you'll find exports for createConstants
and createReducer
. The former is pretty much an even lazier keyMirror
, so if you really hate typing out those constants you may want to give it a shot. Check it out:
import { createConstants } from 'utils';
export default createConstants(
'TODO_CREATE',
'TODO_DESTROY',
'TODO_TOGGLE_COMPLETE'
);
The other utility, create-reducer
, is designed to expedite creating reducers when they're defined via an object map rather than switch statements. As an example, what once looked like this:
import { TODO_CREATE } from 'constants/todo';
const initialState = [];
const handlers = {
[TODO_CREATE] : (state, payload) => { ... }
};
export default function todo (state = initialState, action) {
const handler = handlers[action.type];
return handler ? handler(state, action.payload) : state;
}
Can now look like this:
import { TODO_CREATE } from 'constants/todo';
import { createReducer } from 'utils';
const initialState = [];
export default createReducer(initialState, {
[TODO_CREATE] : (state, payload) => { ... }
});
Out of the box, this starter kit is deployable by serving the ~/dist
folder generated by npm run compile
(make sure to specify your target NODE_ENV
as well). This project does not concern itself with the details of server-side rendering or API structure, since that demands an opinionated structure that makes it difficult to extend the starter kit. However, if you do need help with more advanced deployment strategies, here are a few tips:
If you are serving the application via a web server such as nginx, make sure to direct incoming routes to the root ~/dist/index.html
file and let react-router take care of the rest. The Express server that comes with the starter kit is able to be extended to serve as an API or whatever else you need, but that's entirely up to you.
Have more questions? Feel free to submit an issue or join the Gitter chat!
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Reference: issue 110