Get started with create-react-app and your own express server for development and production.
- CLI to generate project structure
- Fully ES6 support
- Pre-written npm scripts to help development, testing, linting, building and deployment process
- Eslint for both frontend and backend
- Jest for both frontend and backend
- Node.js, from v0.12.x to the latest version. Using any version of v6.x.x or above is preferred.
First of all, you should install create-express-react
via npm as a global package, this is the CLI to generate the template for you to get started.
npm install create-express-react -g
Once you have create-express-react
, then run it to create the template. The command below will generate a folder named myApp
in Desktop
.
cd ~/Desktop
create-express-react myApp
Then you need to grab create-react-app
by running:
cd ~/myApp
npm install
npm run setup
Finally, you can start your app:
npm start
For example to install ANTD
in project root:
npm install antd --save
npm install babel-plugin-import --save-dev
cd frontend
npm install react-app-rewired --save-dev
Replace
"start": "react-scripts start",
"build": "react-scripts build",
"test": "react-scripts test --env=jsdom",
With:
"start": "react-app-rewired start",
"build": "react-app-rewired build",
"test": "react-app-rewired test --env=jsdom",
inside frontend folder:
touch config-overrides.js
add code:
const { injectBabelPlugin } = require("react-app-rewired");
module.exports = function override(config, env) {
config = injectBabelPlugin(
["import", { libraryName: "antd", style: "css" }],
config
);
return config;
};
You are all set for modular import of ANTD, follow the docs and add LocaleProvider for EN
Go back to your project root and you can run as usual with
npm start
If you encounter an error:
Error: Cannot find module 'react-scripts/package.json'
fix with:
cd frontend
npm install
There are a lot of pre-written npm scripts to help you speed up the development and deployment process.
npm run setup
Using official create-react-app
to generate a folder root/frontend
for all frontend development. Also adding the proxy setting in root/frontend/package.json
to pass request to express server.
npm run start
Concurrently starting webpack-dev-server for react running on port 3000
, and express backend server on port 4000
. HOC will be enabled for all react related code and also the server will be restarted by nodemon if there is any change made for the backend code.
npm run test-server
Running server tests via Jest, which are in root/server/__test__
npm run test-react
Running react tests via Jest. There is no test file by default, you may create a folder /root/frontend/__test__
and put all test files there.
npm run lint
Run ESLint on all backend code. The config files can be found in root/.eslintrc
and root/.eslintignore
. Please note that the linting for react will be auto-enabled when you run npm run start
npm run build
Build all the server side code into root/dist
, then build react and move all built files (index.html, javascript, css, images, etc.) to root/dist/public
for production
npm run deploy
Deploy the server via pm2, you can find the config file in root/deploy.json
.
There are also some helper npm scripts, see more details in root/package.json
.
For Development, the webpack-dev-server is running on port 3000 serving react app, and the backend express server is running on port 4000. All of the requests sent by frontend app will be passed to express server via proxy.
Web App <--- Webpack-dev-server <---> Proxy <---> Express Server
For Production, all the frontend code will be compiled and moved into a static directory inside express server. Now there is just one express server running, which is serving both the frontend app and backend endpoints.
Endpoints <--- Express Server ---> Web App
TBD
- Should we put some of the common used react libraries into
root/frontend
? - Need to discuss the details about how to stucture express code.
Please read CONTRIBUTING.md for details on our code of conduct, and the process for submitting pull requests to us.
We use SemVer for versioning. For the versions available, see the tags on this repository.
- Haochuan Liu - Initial work - _haochuan
This project is licensed under the MIT License.