This is a proof of concept repo that sideloads a CRA app into an express ejs view during development. The advantage of this is that fetch calls to the express API are the same both in dev and in prod since the UI and API load on the same Port.
Clone the repo and install npm dependencies in the api and frontend folders
Copy api/.env.sample to api/.env
Startup both apps using node-foreman by first installing it.
npm i -g node-foreman
Then booting it up from the root folder with
nf start
Set NODE_ENV=production in api/.env
Build the CRA front end with yarn build
Run the Prod app with nf start
You can view the frontend app on http://localhost:4000 and call the api health check endpoint on http://localhost:4000/health