developer-insights

Table of Contents

1. Features
2. Requirements
3. Getting Started
4. Config Files
5. Application Structure
6. Development
   • Routing
7. Testing
8. Production
   • Deployment

Requirements

• node ^6.11.5
• yarn ^0.23.0 or npm ^3.0.0

Getting Started

1. Install dependencies: yarn install (or npm install)
2. If pulling to a new environment (not where project was created) - create src/config.js file that looks like so:

   const firebase = {
     // Config from Firebase console
   }
   
   // Config for react-redux-firebase
   export const reduxFirebase = {
     userProfile: 'users', // root to which user profiles are written
   }
   
   export default { firebase, reduxFirebase }

3. Start Development server: yarn start (or npm start)

While developing, you will probably rely mostly on npm start; however, there are additional scripts at your disposal:

npm run <script>	Description
start	Serves your app at localhost:3000 and displays Webpack Dashboard
start:simple	Serves your app at localhost:3000 without Webpack Dashboard
build	Builds the application to ./dist
test	Runs unit tests with Karma. See testing
test:watch	Runs test in watch mode to re-run tests when changed
lint	Lints the project for potential errors
lint:fix	Lints the project and fixes all correctable errors

Husky is used to enable prepush hook capability. The prepush script currently runs eslint, which will keep you from pushing if there is any lint within your code. If you would like to disable this, remove the prepush script from the package.json.

Config Files

There are multiple configuration files:

• Project Path Configuration - project.config.js
• Firebase Project Configuration (including how src/config.js is built on CI) - .firebaserc
• Project Configuration used within source (can change based on environment variables on CI) - src/config.js

More details in the Application Structure Section

Application Structure

The application structure presented in this boilerplate is fractal, where functionality is grouped primarily by feature rather than file type. Please note, however, that this structure is only meant to serve as a guide, it is by no means prescriptive. That said, it aims to represent generally accepted guidelines and patterns for building scalable applications. If you wish to read more about this pattern, please check out this awesome writeup by Justin Greenberg.

.
├── build                    # All build-related configuration
│   ├── scripts              # Scripts used within the building process
│   ├── karma.config.js      # Test configuration for Karma
│   └── webpack.config.js    # Environment-specific configuration files for webpack
├── server                   # Express application that provides webpack middleware
│   └── main.js              # Server application entry point
├── src                      # Application source code
│   ├── config.js            # Environment specific config file with settings from Firebase (created by CI)
│   ├── constants.js         # Project constants such as firebase paths and form names
│   ├── index.html           # Main HTML page container for app
│   ├── main.js              # Application bootstrap and rendering
│   ├── normalize.js         # Browser normalization and polyfills
│   ├── components           # Global Reusable Presentational Components
│   ├── containers           # Global Reusable Container Components (connected to redux state)
│   ├── layouts              # Components that dictate major page structure
│   │   └── CoreLayout       # Global application layout in which to render routes
│   ├── routes               # Main route definitions and async split points
│   │   ├── index.js         # Bootstrap main application routes with store
│   │   └── Home             # Fractal route
│   │       ├── index.js     # Route definitions and async split points
│   │       ├── assets       # Assets required to render components
│   │       ├── components   # Presentational React Components (state connect and handler logic in enhancers)
│   │       ├── modules      # Collections of reducers/constants/actions
│   │       └── routes **    # Fractal sub-routes (** optional)
│   ├── static               # Static assets
│   ├── store                # Redux-specific pieces
│   │   ├── createStore.js   # Create and instrument redux store
│   │   └── reducers.js      # Reducer registry and injection
│   ├── styles               # Application-wide styles (generally settings)
│   └── utils                 # General Utilities (used throughout application)
│   │   ├── components.js   # Utilities for building/implementing react components (often used in enhancers)
│   │   ├── form.js         # For forms (often used in enhancers that use redux-form)
│   │   └── router.js       # Utilities for routing such as those that redirect back to home if not logged in
├── project.config.js        # Project configuration settings
├── .firebaserc              # Firebase Project configuration settings (including ci settings)
└── tests                    # Unit tests

Development

Routing

We use react-router route definitions (<route>/index.js) to define units of logic within our application. See the application structure section for more information.

Testing

To add a unit test, create a .spec.js file anywhere inside of ./tests. Karma and webpack will automatically find these files, and Mocha and Chai will be available within your test without the need to import them.

Production

Build code before deployment by running npm run build. There are multiple options below for types of deployment, if you are unsure, checkout the Firebase section.

Deployment

1. Install Firebase Command Line Tool: npm i -g firebase-tools

CI Deploy (recommended)

Note: Config for this is located within travis.yml firebase-ci has been added to simplify the CI deployment process. All that is required is providing authentication with Firebase:

1. Login: firebase login:ci to generate an authentication token (will be used to give Travis-CI rights to deploy on your behalf)
2. Set FIREBASE_TOKEN environment variable within Travis-CI environment
3. Run a build on Travis-CI

If you would like to deploy to different Firebase instances for different branches (i.e. prod), change ci settings within .firebaserc.

For more options on CI settings checkout the firebase-ci docs

Manual deploy

1. Run firebase:login
2. Initialize project with firebase init then answer:
   • What file should be used for Database Rules? -> database.rules.json
   • What do you want to use as your public directory? -> build
   • Configure as a single-page app (rewrite all urls to /index.html)? -> Yes
   • What Firebase project do you want to associate as default? -> your Firebase project name
3. Build Project: npm run build
4. Confirm Firebase config by running locally: firebase serve
5. Deploy to firebase: firebase deploy

NOTE: You can use firebase serve to test how your application will work when deployed to Firebase, but make sure you run npm run build first.

FAQ

1. Why node 6.11.5 instead of a newer version?

Cloud Functions runtime is still on 6.11.5, which is why that is what is used for the travis build version. This will be switched when the functions runtime is updated.

1. Why Yarn over node's package-lock.json?

Relates to previous question. Node 6.*.* and equivalent npm didn't include lock files by default.

1. Why enhancers over containers? - For many reasons, here are just a few:
   • separates concerns to have action/business logic move to enhancers (easier for future modularization + optimization)
   • components remain "dumb" by only receiving props which makes them more portable
   • smaller files which are easier to parse
   • functional components can be helpful (along with other tools) when attempting to optimize things

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