React Webpack Node

Your One-Stop solution for a full-stack app with ES6/ES2015 React.js featuring universal Redux, React Router, React Router Redux Hot reloading, CSS modules, Express 4.x, and multiple ORMs.

Demo site:

https://react-webpack-node.herokuapp.com/

Features:

• isomorphic universal Rendering

• Redux Predictive state containers.

• Server-side rendering with React Router 2.x. Having server-side rendering allows you to pre-render the initial state of your components when a user (or search engine crawler) requests a page.

• Integrating Redux with React Router with Redux Simple Router React Router Redux

• Asynchronous Data Fetching on server-side rendering

• Server side authentication + Redirecting for components

• Hot reloading using react-transform-hmr

• Time travel using Redux-Devtools Chrome Extension

• Webpack for both development and production bundles. It's (in my opinion) the best bundler for JS, CSS, LESS, images, and lots more!

• CSS Modules allows for modular and reusable CSS. Say goodbye to conflicts (most of them) and global scope

• Unit Tests with webpack, karma, jsdom, mocha, & sinon

  • Reducers
  • Components
  • Synchronous and Asynchronous Actions

• Express 4.x server with a ton of middleware

• Mongoose for MongoDB

• Sequelize for Postgres

• Procfile to enable deployment to Heroku & Docs on Salt configurations + Deployment for Digital Ocean

Motivation

The motivation is simple, best practices. Everyone's ultimate goal is to build a non-trivial applications. Performant and free of bugs, we want our applications to be secure and joy for the user. We believe that using a mixture of with React.js and Webpack and Node is the best way to accomplish this. (hence...react-webpack-node).

This boilerplate serves a second purpose as well. It is a learning tool for any and all that are interested in learning how to put a large React application together. We have had extensive additions to this boilerplate from the community over time as practices have evolved, and we are always interested in hearing new ideas and welcome all forms of help.

Why Redux

I'm really a fan of this implementation of flux for state management. The main principles of having:

• a single store
• state being read-only (you have to express an intent to mutate being creating actions)
• mutations written as pure functions

make it very fun and easy to write predictable code! There's a ton of reasons why, but you should head to the Redux docs to dive in!

Or if you are more of a visual learner watch the free egghead video series narrated by the creator of redux:

1. Getting Started
2. Building Idiomatically

Data Flow

A simplistic representation of data flow from server to client is:

Express app.use() receives a request
-> Calls a pre-built webpack file for the server
-> Runs matching of routes in react-router for server
-> Makes async data fetching request
-> Renders Route component to string
-> Construct HTML file (with Meta, Link tags using helmet)
-> Browser receives html file with initial state
-> Client side React.JS kicks in and initializes with given state
-> Continues where it left off
-> Everyone is happy :)

More TBD

Redux DevTools

You will have to install redux devtools extension from here and then everything should just work!

Instructions

Database

We currently support MongoDB and Postgres, as well as the ability to not use any database. Learn about how to configure your app.

Development

Development is a breeze. Once you have installed all your dependencies all the configuration is done for you. using simple The process is outlined here.

Unit Tests

Testing with:

• karma as test runner
  • karma.conf.js for the main karma configuration (it has webpack configurations)
  • tests.webpack.js which is the single entry file. It uses webpack's require API to find all the files we need that have a -test.js suffix.
• mocha as the test framework
• jsdom as my test environment

# Run test once
npm test

# Run in watch mode
npm test:watch

We have unit tests for async (redux) actions, reducers, and components.

Deployment

Currently we support Heroku and Digital Ocean and AWS

Yeoman Generator

If you like using yeoman generators, you could check out this cool yeoman generator by @iiegor!

FAQ

We have assembled an FAQ here

Check out what people have done

We have a list of projects that have been created with this boilerplate. Check them out to see what can be done or to get some inspiration.

How to Contribute:

Best way to keep up to date is check the issues. I really welcome improvements for all aspects of an app.

1. Any suggestions/improvements/bugs can be in the form of Pull Requests, or creating an issue.
2. Coding guidelines:

• Airbnb's Style Guide
• bendc's frontend guidelines

Credits to webpack-server-side-example, example-app, flux-examples, node-express-mongo-demo, hackathon-starter, web-starter-kit, awesome material-ui, alt and iso, react-starter, reap, isomorphic-redux-app and mxstbr/react-boilerplate

Easter Eggs 🥚

This boilerplate has gone through an evolution

React.js -> Facebook Flux -> Alt -> Redux

We have two implementations of universal flux:

• Redux is on our active master branch
• Alt (previously implemented) on flux/alt branch. It features iso, react-router and ImmutableJS.

Note: If you have previously used an alt implementation of this repository, please refer to this branch. I will not be updating it as frequently as master, but definitely welcome suggestions!

License

MIT