Full Stack Web Application using React, Node.js, Express and Webpack

is a quick way to get started with React development and it requires no build configuration. But it completely hides the build config which makes it difficult to extend. It also requires some additional work to integrate it with an existing Node.js/Express backend application. Create React App In this guide, we will walk through the set up of a simple full stack React application with a and backend. Client side code is written in React and the backend API is written using Express. This application is configured with and formatted through . Node.js Express Airbnb’s ESLint rules prettier Source code for this application can be found . here Quick Start # Clone the repositorygit clone https://github.com/crsandeep/simple-react-full-stack # Go inside the directorycd simple-react-full-stack # Install dependenciesyarn (or npm install) # Start development serveryarn dev (or npm run dev) # Build for productionyarn build (or npm run build) # Start production serveryarn start (or npm start) Development mode In the development mode, we will have 2 servers running. The front end code will be served by the which helps with hot and live reloading. The server side Express code will be served by a node server using which helps in automatically restarting the server whenever server side code changes. webpack dev server nodemon Production mode In the production mode, we will have only 1 server running. All the client side code will be bundled into static files using webpack and it will be served by the Node.js/Express application. Details Folder Structure All the source code will be inside directory. Inside src, there is client and server directory. All the frontend code (react, css, js and any other assets) will be in client directory. Backend Node.js/Express code will be in the server directory. src Babel helps us to write code in the latest version of JavaScript. If an environment does not support certain features natively, Babel will help us to compile those features down to a supported version. It also helps us to convert JSX to Javascript. Babel is used describe the configurations required for Babel. Below is the .babelrc file which I am using. .babelrc file Update: Since babel 7 released recently, I am updating code to reflect the changes {"presets": ["@babel/preset-env", "@babel/preset-react"],"plugins": ["@babel/plugin-proposal-class-properties"]} Babel requires plugins to do the transformation. Presets are the set of plugins defined by Babel. Preset allows to use babel-preset-es2015, babel-preset-es2016, and babel-preset-es2017 and it will transform them to ES5. Preset allows us to use JSX syntax and it will transform JSX to Javascript. @babel/preset-env @babel/preset-react plugin transforms static class properties as well as properties declared with the property initializer syntax. @babel/plugin-proposal-class-properties ESLint is a pluggable and configurable linter tool for identifying and reporting on patterns in JavaScript. ESLint (alternatively configurations can we wriiten in Javascript or YAML as well) is used describe the configurations required for ESLint. Below is the .eslintrc.json file which I am using. .eslintrc.json file { which is used by many JavaScript developers worldwide. Since we are going to write both client (browser) and server side (Node.js) code, I am setting the to browser and node. Optionally, we can override the Airbnb’s configurations to suit our needs. I have turned off , and rules. I am using Airbnb’s Javascript Style Guide env no-console comma-dangle react/jsx-filename-extension Webpack is a module bundler. Its main purpose is to bundle JavaScript files for usage in a browser. Webpack file is used to describe the configurations required for webpack. Below is the webpack.config.js file which I am using. webpack.config.js const path = require("path");const HtmlWebpackPlugin = require("html-webpack-plugin");const CleanWebpackPlugin = require("clean-webpack-plugin"); const outputDirectory = "dist"; module.exports = { entry: ./src/client/index.js is where the application starts executing and webpack starts bundling. babel-polyfill is added to support async/await. Read more . entry: Note: here the target directory and the filename for the bundled output output path and filename: Module loaders are transformations that are applied on the source code of a module. We pass all the js file through to transform JSX to Javascript. CSS files are passed through and to load and bundle CSS files. module loaders: babel-loader css-loaders style-loaders Configurations for the webpack-dev-server which will be described in coming section. Dev Server: is a webpack plugin to remove the build folder(s) before building. simplifies creation of HTML files to serve your webpack bundles. It loads the template (public/index.html) and injects the output bundle. plugins: clean-webpack-plugin html-webpack-plugin Webpack dev server is used along with webpack. It provides a development server that provides live reloading for the client side code. This should be used for development only. Webpack dev server The devServer section of webpack.config.js contains the configuration required to run webpack-dev-server which is given below. devServer: { port: 3000, open: true, proxy: { "/api": "http://localhost:8080" }} specifies the Webpack dev server to listen on this particular port (3000 in this case). When is set to true, it will automatically open the home page on startup. URLs can be useful when we have a separate API backend development server and we want to send API requests on the same domain. In our case, we have a Node.js/Express backend where we want to send the API requests to. Port open Proxying Nodemon Nodemon is a utility that will monitor for any changes in the server source code and it automatically restart the server. This is used in development only. nodemon.json file is used to describe the configurations for Nodemon. Below is the nodemon.json file which I am using. { "watch": ["src/server/"]} Here, we tell nodemon to watch the files in the directory src/server where out server side code resides. Nodemon will restart the node server whenever a file under src/server directory is modified. Express Express is a web application framework for Node.js. It is used to build our backend API’s. src/server/index.js is the entry point to the server application. Below is the src/server/index.js file const express = require("express");const os = require("os"); const app = express(); app.use(express.static("dist"));app.get("/api/getUsername", (req, res) => res.send({ username: os.userInfo().username }));app.listen(8080, () => console.log("Listening on port 8080!")); This starts a server and listens on port 8080 for connections. The app responds with for requests to the URL (/api/getUsername). It is also configured to serve the static files from directory. {username: } dist Concurrently is used to run multiple commands concurrently. I am using it to run the webpack dev server and the backend node server concurrently in the development environment. Below are the npm/yarn script commands used. Concurrently "client": "webpack-dev-server --mode development --devtool inline-source-map --hot","server": "nodemon src/server/index.js","dev": "concurrently \"npm run server\" \"npm run client\"" VSCode + ESLint + Prettier is a lightweight but powerful source code editor. takes care of the code-quality. takes care of all the formatting. VSCode ESLint Prettier Installation guide Install VSCode Install ESLint extension Install Prettier extension Modify the VSCode user settings to add below configuration "eslint.alwaysShowStatus": true, "eslint.autoFixOnSave": true, "editor.formatOnSave": true, "prettier.eslintIntegration": true Above, we have modified editor configurations. Alternatively, this can be configured at the project level by following . this article Source code for this application can be found . here