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React from scratch - React with Webpack, Jest, Enzyme and functional CSS - a step by step guide

A demo of basic (and some advanced) React concepts in a React app. Also a webpack4 setup guide useful for development, with tips and some necessary yet light reading along the way.

★ Note: No script automated React build will be used here. More and more notes and tips will be added in the future. Keep reading, or scroll to Webpack setup section.

Table of Contents:

1. Setting-up the environment.

Yarn package manager with Node version Manager

1.1 - Install Yarn

  # Add repo
  curl -sS https://dl.yarnpkg.com/debian/pubkey.gpg | sudo apt-key add -
  echo "deb https://dl.yarnpkg.com/debian/ stable main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/yarn.list

  # Install with yarn included Node (see next line)
  sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install yarn

  # When NVM present avoid node installation with
  sudo apt-get install --no-install-recommends yarn

1.2 - Install NVM

  # Get NVM the scary way
  wget -qO- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/creationix/nvm/v0.33.8/install.sh | bash

1.3 - NVM and Yarn path setup in your .zshrc:

  # NVM Node Version Manager
  export NVM_DIR="$HOME/.nvm"
  [ -s "$NVM_DIR/nvm.sh" ] && \. "$NVM_DIR/nvm.sh"  # This loads nvm
  [ -s "$NVM_DIR/bash_completion" ] && \. "$NVM_DIR/bash_completion"  # This loads nvm bash_completion

  # Yarn (must be placed after nvm)
  # export PATH=$HOME~/.yarn/bin:$PATH
  export PATH="$PATH:`yarn global bin`"

1.4 - Use of yarn: Initialize a project with yarn init.

Run yarn help and read about global options for setup.

★ Tip: Yarn is ideal with NVM since is not forcing you to migrate your globally installed modules every time you change Node version.

1.5 - Adding scripts section in package.json

People are using the "scripts" section of package.json file in all sorts of ways. There is also one famous article about how to replace build automation tools using only piped commands in scripts.

{
  // ...
  "description": "React ecosystem demo",
  // Note: Comments will not work on JSON files
  // Define scripts here and run them with "npm run ..." or "yarn"
  "scripts": {
    "serve":
      "webpack-dev-server --watch --config ./config/webpack.dev.js --mode development",
    "dev": "webpack --mode development",
    "build": "webpack --mode production",
    "watch":
      "webpack --config ./config/webpack.dev.js --watch --mode development",
    "lint": "./node_modules/.bin/eslint -v --color ./src/**/*.js",
    "pretty": "./node_modules/.bin/prettier ./src/**/*.js --write",
    "precommit": "pretty-quick --staged"
  },
  // ... Comments will not work on JSON files
}

1.8 - Handling Early versions of Node and older browsers

2 - Babel and Babel presets (Official and experimental) installation and setup

  • Read about the Babel transpiler: JavaScript Transpilers: What They Are & Why We Need Them

  • The babel-cli: Babel comes with a built-in CLI which can be used to compile files from the command line. Install it with: yarn add babel-cli --dev

  • Read about Babel presets.

    • ★ Tip: babel-preset-es2015 is deprecated. Use babel-preset-env with babel-preset-stage-0 instead. The stage-0 allows experimental features.
    • The babel-preset-env: is all about latest stable JS features. It allows us to use 'const', 'import from', arrow functions and many more ...
      • Installation: yarn add babel-preset-env --dev
      • ★ Tip: run it from terminal with node ./node_modules/.bin/babel index.js -o ./bundle.js --presets=env

  • We are going to define Babel presets in webpack so we don't need the .babelrc file.

2.1 - ES6 features quick review

  • ES6 modules: import path from 'path'
  • Arrow functions: a => a * 2
  • Classes: class MyClass extends Framework.Class { }
  • Object literals:{ foo }
  • Template Strings: Foo ${bar}
  • Destructing: ({ a }) => { console.log(a) }
  • Let/Const: const foo = 'Hello' let bar='World'

3. Code-Linting, Code-Formating and Git hooks

Take a look at ESLint, "the pluggable linting utility for JavaScript and JSX" in eslint.org.

Take a look at Prettier, "the opinionated code formatter" in prettier.io.

Take a look at Husky

3.1 - Eslint and Prettier plugins for VSCode

Install Prettier and ESlint plugins from VSCode marketplace:

3.2 - Bring all together

  • We can run eslint --init interactive cli in our project path and answer the questions about how we want to style our code. First install Eslint with prettier plugin rules:

    yarn add -D eslint prettier eslint-config-prettier eslint-plugin-prettier

    If we want to follow 'airbnb' style-guide and combine a custom configuration with prettier, we can run in the terminal:

      $ ./node_modules/.bin/eslint --init
  ? How would you like to configure ESLint? Use a popular style guide
  ? Which style guide do you want to follow? Airbnb
  ? Do you use React? Yes
  ? What format do you want your config file to be in? JSON

  • Use prettier for staged files to git and only watch on changed files. To do this we need husky. The link-staged library will output only changed files in the console before the commit !. For this we need to add some configuration lines in our package.json file to define the order of execution, but the prettier-quick lib relieves us from this. However if you don't want to use this little automation, add this into package.json after the scripts section:

    {
  //...
  "lint-staged": {
    "*.js": [
      "yarn-lint",
      "prettier --write",
      "git add"
    ]
  }
},
// ...

yarn add -D husky lint-staged prettier-quick

  • Test it with ./node_modules/.bin/prettier ./src/*.js --write, configure it with .eslintrc and automated in package.json file:
{
  /* 1. ---- ./.eslintrc.json file ---- */
  "parser": "babel-eslint",
  "extends": ["prettier", "airbnb"],
  "env": {
    "es6": true,
    "browser": true
  },
  "globals": {
    "API_URL": true
  },
  "rules": {
    "arrow-parens": 0,
    "arrow-body-style": 0,
    "no-extra-semi": 2,
    "no-tabs": 0,
    "react/jsx-filename-extension": 0,
    "react/require-default-props": 0,
    "react/forbid-prop-types": 0,
    "jsx-a11y/click-events-have-key-events": 0,
    "jsx-a11y/no-noninteractive-element-interactions": 0
  }
}

    /* 2. ---- ./package.json file ---- */
    "scripts": {
      // ...
      "lint": "./node_modules/.bin/eslint ./src/app/**/*.js",
      "precommit": "pretty-quick --staged"
    }

★ Tips:

4. Webpack4 setup and configuration

4.1 - Intro to Webpack "module bundler" and its dependency graph

  • How webpack works
    • Entry point: Starting point of the graph. From here Webpack starts following the imports to form the rest of the graph.
    • Output: Explicit path (where to save the output bundle).
    • Module: Any file, whether a JS file, stylesheet, image, font, Markdown, etc.
    • Loaders: A transformation applied to a module through the bundling process.
    • Plugins: Apply transformations on parts of the bundle output.
    • Simple run from terminal: node_modules/.bin/webpack ./entry-point.js ./output-file.js
  • How to install and configure Webpack: The webpack.config.js file.
  • Integrating Babel into webpack using a loader
  • Use of webpack-dev-server ★ Note: Webpack dev server's cli have moved to webpack-cli in webpack4.
  • Setting up a webpack plugin
  • Getting everything ready to start writing React code.

4.2 - Installations

  # Babel core
  yarn add -D babel-core babel-cli

  # Babel main loader for Webpack
  yarn add -D babel-loader

  # Babel presets. Note 'babel-preset-es2015' is deprecated
  yarn add -D babel-preset-react babel-preset-env babel-preset-stage-0

  # Webpack and dev server:
  yarn add -D webpack webpack-cli webpack-dev-server

  # Additional Webpack loaders for html, css, postcss, images and fonts:
  yarn add -D html-loader file-loader css-loader style-loader sass-loader node-sass postcss postcss-loader

  # Webpack plugins for serving html and clean our '/dist' folder:
  yarn add -D html-webpack-plugin clean-webpack-plugin

  # Install React libraries as main dependencies:
  yarn add react react-dom react-router-dom prop-types

  # Install dotenv for global environment variables definitions
  # Note: 'whatwg-fetch' polyfill is for older browsers 'fetch' support:
  yarn add -D dotenv dotenv-webpack whatwg-fetch

4.3 - Configurations

  • → The webpack.config.js file.
/* 1. ---- ./config/webpack.dev.js ---- */
// Core - Plugins
const webpack = require('webpack');
const path = require('path');
const Dotenv = require('dotenv-webpack');
const CleanWebpackPlugin = require('clean-webpack-plugin');
const HtmlWebPackPlugin = require('html-webpack-plugin');

// Rules - moved to a separate file for readability
const appRules = require('./rules.js');

// Main directories - change if you move this file
const rootDir = '..';
const inDir = 'src';
const outDir = 'dist';

// Paths - Ports
const PATHS = {
  src: path.join(__dirname, `${rootDir}/${inDir}`),
  dist: path.resolve(__dirname, `${rootDir}/${outDir}`),
  serve: path.join(__dirname, `${rootDir}/${outDir}`),
  servePort: 8799,
};

// Vendors in separate bundle
const vendorLibs = ['react', 'react-dom', 'react-router-dom', 'prop-types'];

// config() exposes 'env' to 'process.env' (see plugins section)
require('dotenv').config();

/**
 * Export main JS Object. We name it CONFIG optionally for modularity.
 * Here we define the 'entry' and the 'output' values
 */
const CONFIG = {
  /**
   * 1. ENTRY POINT
   * Here we define the entry and the output key values. Note that webpack 4
   * is serving files from an 'src' by default and outputs in 'dist' folder.
   * Optional use of 'context' key to define main source path so we can avoid
   * writing './src/index.js'
   */
  context: PATHS.src,
  entry: {
    bundle: [
      // Older browsers polyfill support for 'fetch'
      'whatwg-fetch',
      /**
       * For hot reloading into an existing server without webpack-dev-server
       * add 'webpack-hot-middleware/client':
       */
      './index.js',
    ],
    vendor: vendorLibs,
  },
  devtool: 'inline-source-map',

  /**
   * 2. DEV-SERVER
   * https://webpack.js.org/configuration/dev-server/
   */
  devServer: {
    /**
     * Use historyApiFallback to redirect not found requests to index.html file
     * so we can use react-router instead of the build in express server.
     * It is a good practice to define 'publicPath' here and also in 'output'
     * section (6.)
     */
    historyApiFallback: {
      index: [`${outDir}/index`],
    },
    contentBase: PATHS.serve,
    watchContentBase: true,
    publicPath: `/${outDir}/`,
    port: PATHS.servePort,
    compress: true,
    progress: true,
    open: true,
    inline: true,
    hot: true,
    stats: {
      colors: true,
    },
  },

  /**
   * 4. LOADERS:
   * Rules are defined in './config/rules.js' file for readability.
   * Inside the rules array we can add as many loaders as we want.
   * Every loader takes a 'test' attribute that accepts a regex as a value.
   */
  module: {
    /** Exclude large libs for performance */
    // noParse: content => /jquery|lodash/.test(content),
    rules: [
      appRules.JS_RULE,
      appRules.HTML_RULE,
      appRules.CSS_RULE,
      appRules.SASS_RULE,
      appRules.FILE_RULE,
      appRules.FONT_RULE,
    ],
  },

  /**
   * 5. PLUGINS
   */
  plugins: [
    // Clean webpack plugin
    new CleanWebpackPlugin([outDir]),
    /**
     * Html plugin
     * https://github.com/jantimon/html-webpack-plugin
     */
    new HtmlWebPackPlugin({
      template: 'index.html',
      favicon: 'favicon.ico',
      inject: 'body',
    }),
    /** HMR - Native webpack plugins (no need for installation) */
    new webpack.NamedModulesPlugin(),
    new webpack.HotModuleReplacementPlugin(),
    new webpack.LoaderOptionsPlugin({
      debug: true,
    }),
    /**
     * Webpack gives our modules and chunks ids to identify them.
     * https://github.com/webpack/docs/wiki/optimization:
     */
    new webpack.optimize.OccurrenceOrderPlugin(),
    /**
     * Use '.env' file for global var definitions, and store sensitive data.
     * The '.env.sample' file in this repo that must be renamed to '.env'.
     * Read carefully: https://github.com/mrsteele/dotenv-webpack
     */
    new Dotenv({
      path: './.env',
      safe: false,
      systemvars: true,
    }),
    /**
     * Register global vars to webpack for all the files. Must return a string.
     */
    new webpack.DefinePlugin({
      API_URL: JSON.stringify(process.env.API_URL),
    }),
  ],

  /**
   * 6. OUTPUT
   * https://webpack.js.org/configuration/output/
   */
  output: {
    filename: '[name].js',
    path: `${PATHS.dist}/`,
    sourceMapFilename: '[file].map',
    chunkFilename: '[name].js',
    publicPath: `/${outDir}/`,
  },
  resolve: {
    extensions: ['.js', '.json', '.css'],
  },
};

module.exports = CONFIG;
  • → The package.json file. Here we can define our project dependencies, the scripts we want to run, the babel presets, browser support for auto-prefixer and many more...
  /**
   * 2. ---- ./package.json (scripts section) ----
   * Here we can define separate files for production or development
  */
    "scripts": {
      "serve": "webpack-dev-server --config ./config/webpack.dev.js --mode development",
      "build": "webpack --config ./config/webpack.dev.js --mode production",
      "watch": "webpack --config ./config/webpack.dev.js --watch --mode development",
      "lint": "./node_modules/.bin/eslint ./src/**/*.js",
      "pretty": "./node_modules/.bin/prettier ./src/**/*.js --write",
      "precommit": "pretty-quick --staged"
    },
    "babel": {
        "presets": ["react", "env"]
    },
    "browserslist": ["> 1%", "last 2 versions"],
    // ...
  • → The .env file. Here we define sensitive data that we want webpack to process but we don't want to leave our machine. It is a good idea to add this file to .gitignore. Inside this repo the .env.sample file must be renamed to .env
# 2. ---- ./env ----
API_URL=http://reactrecipes.herokuapp.com

4.4 - Run the project in browser

Rename .env.sample to .env, run yarn serve and watch the server in localhost:8799

5. React overview

  • Creating and mounting root component. About renderers.
  • Functional and Class components
  • Importing assets
  • Compose components to create more complex UI
  • Props: Read only data-types (strings, numbers, arrays, objects, classes...)
  • Passing and collecting props, conditionals and common problems
  • Prop-types in React
  • Intro to fetch: A promised based web request mechanism
  • Making async request in the component life cycle
  • Use the state to make components dynamic
  • Basic use of React Router v4.x
  • Handling redirects and 404
  • Add links to routes

6. Styling in React

Different approaches, one philosophy: "the real way to scale CSS, is to stop writing CSS". You are using JS anyway, so why not take advantage of the language to style your elements ?

  • Plain CSS: Hard to maintain in large scale. Global naming, monolithic files, high coupling between components.

  • Inline styling: Use of the style prop of React elements.

    • The good: CSS in JS
    • The bad: No reusable CSS. High coupling between markup and styles. Huge components.

  • CSS modules: Treat a CSS file as one module using Webpack

    • The good: Component isolated CSS. No monolithic files with global scope.
    • The bad: No reusable CSS. Huge amount of files.

  • Styled components: CSS in JS solution using ES6.

    • The good: CSS with JS in one file. Easy props based styles. Popular. Good for animation.
    • The bad: Hard to style components with many nested elements.
    • The ugly: Odd backtick syntax. Bloated files.

  • Functional CSS with BassCSS: CSS toolkit with extensible predefined classes: "The overwhelming majority of CSS you would need for your elements has already been written".

    • The good: Almost zero repetition. Enforces style-guide. Quick to prototype. PostCSS and CSSNext. Small(er) bundled file.
    • The bad: Hard to apply specific styles. Find and replace problem. Fixed units.
    • The ugly: Long less semantic classnames. Confusing at first.

  • Worth exploring:

    • Tachyons: Functional css for humans.
    • Radium is a set of tools to manage inline styles on React elements. It gives you powerful styling capabilities without CSS.
    • Aphrodite: Inline Styles that work.
    • Styletron: Universal, high-performance JavaScript styles.
    • React-JSS

6.1 - Setting Up PostCSS

The PostCSS project is an amazing project that allows CSS transformations using JS. They also claim that PostCSS "transforms CSS specs into more compatible CSS so you don’t need to wait for browser support." You can think that PostCss is to CSS, what Babel is to JS. It enable us to write CSSNext. CSSNext is to CSS, what ES6 is to JS: Use of future CSS features that are not yet supported by the browser.

Features: Automatic vendor prefixer with autoprefixer, custom properties and var(), nesting, many color functions and more...

★ Tip: There are many (more than 200) powerful PostCSS plugins, some good learning sources out there and even a github tutorial by David Wells

  • Install Autoprefixer, Postcss and postcss-loader for webpack.

    yarn add -D autoprefixer postcss postcss-loader

  • Add some postcss plugins that will allow us custom PostCSS transformations in basscss. Note that classnames library is not a postcss plugin but a very useful CSS utility for React (see RecipeDetail.js file):

    yarn add -D postcss-cssnext postcss-import classnames

  • Configure css rules in ./config/rules.js file:

  //...
      /**
       * Css loader - Exclude node_modules
       * https://webpack.js.org/loaders/css-loader/
       * - The postcss loader has a separate config file in project root.
       * - Webpack is reading the order of the plugins from right to left
       *   so in this setup "postcss-loader" will be loaded first.
      */
      {
        test: /\.css$/,
        exclude: /node_modules/
        use: ["style-loader", "css-loader", "postcss-loader"],
      },
  //...
  • Configure the postcss.config.js file:
/* 2. ---- Create a ./postcss.config.js file ---- */

module.exports = {
  plugins: [require('postcss-cssnext'), require('postcss-import')],
};

6.2 - Setting Up BassCSS

  • Install basic libraries. We will install them as main dependencies:

yarn add basscss basscss-background-colors basscss-colors classnames

If your postcss rules are setup correctly you are good to go.

7. Testing with jest and Enzyme

Jest is a fast and sand-boxed JS testing engine that is easy to configure. It is not limited only to React as it can provide tests for all major web frameworks Jest provides build-in coverage reports, snapshot testing support with automatic Babel integration.

7.1 Install and setup Jest

  • Install Jest and its eslint plugin. The react-test-renderer is for snapshot tests later on:

    yarn add jest eslint-plugin-jest react-test-renderer -D

  • By default Jest will create a __test__ folder will include test files according this regex pattern: (/__tests__/.*|\\.(test|spec))\\.(js|jsx)$. If we want a custom one, we create a jest.config.js file inside the folder of our choice. In this case the specs folder:

    module.exports = {
  // Use a regex pattern to define a test folder
  testRegex: './src/.*?(Spec)\\.js',
  // Ignored folders
  modulePathIgnorePatterns: ['node_modules', 'dist'],
  // Ignore __snapshots__ folders for tests
  testPathIgnorePatterns: ['__snapshots__'],
};

  • Create a sample test in ./src/specs/TestSpec.js:

    /* ---- ./src/specs/TestSpec.js ---- */
describe('Test', () => {
  test('Test', () => {
    // assert
  });
});

  • Edit the ./.eslintrc.json file:

      //...
  "plugins": ["jest"],
  "env": {
      "es6": true,
      "browser": true,
      "jest/globals": true
  },
  //...

  • Add a "test" script in package.json file and run it:

      //...
  "test": "./node_modules/.bin/jest",
  //...

7.2 Use snapshot tests for react components

The toMatchSnapshot function is responsible for saving the JSON tree, compares it to the output JSON and checking if it matches.

test('Test Name', () => {
  expect(json).toMatchSnapshot();
});

This is why we need to transform a component to a JSON representation to create a snapshot test. The oficial tool for creating Jest representations of React components is react-test-renderer and we must install it.

  • ★ Tip: Notice that because of our setup we need always to add the Spec postfix in the end of the file. So if we need to test the Header.js component, we must create a HeaderSpec.js test file.
test('Test Name', () => {
  const component = renderer.create(<Component />);
  const tree = component.toJSON();
});

Now we can create our snapshot tests. Some examples can be found in ./specs file.

7.3 Mock Static assets in our tests:

Configuring Jest to mock images on our tests by adding the following lines in jest.config.js:

  //...
  /**
   * Jest by default will try to load a static asset as a real js package.
   * Every time we try to import a module inside a test that matches a regex,
   * load a mock file instead of loading the real package.
   */
  moduleNameMapper: {
    '\\.(jpg|jpeg|png)$': '<rootDir>/src/utils/fileMock.js',
  },

Then we create ./src/utils/fileMock.js file:

module.exports = 'test-file-stub';

7.4 Use Enzyme to test more complex scenarios:

Enzyme is a JS utility for React from airbnb, that makes it easier to assert, manipulate and traverse your React component output. It mimics jQuery API for DOM manipulation and traversal. Use it with an Adapter for the particular React version you are using.

  • Enzyme Shallow rendering: Useful for constraining yourself to testing a component as a unit. Renders components only one level down. Accessible via the shallow function

  • Enzyme Full rendering: Ideal for use cases where you have components that may interact with DOM APIs, or may require the full lifecycle callbacks to be executed. Also for testing click events. Accessible via the mount function.

Enzyme component wrapper API

  • find(selector): Find nodes that matches the provided selector
  • hasClass(className): Returns whether or not the component has the provided class.
  • exists(): Returns whether or not the current element exists.
  • first(): Returns first node of the current wrapper.
  • last(): Returns last node of the current wrapper.
  • simulate(): Simulates an event on the current node by passing the type of the event that we want to simulate in an argument.
  • setProps(): Manually set props on the root component.
  • setState(): Manually set state on the root component.
  • more ...

Jest-enzyme setup

  • Install Enzyme: yarn add enzyme enzyme-adapter-react-16

  • Create a polyfill for the requestAnimationFrame function browser support in ./src/specs/polyfill.js file:

    const requestAnimationFrame = cb => {
  setTimeout(cb, 0);
};
// Assign the above function to the global function
global.requestAnimationFrame = requestAnimationFrame;

export default requestAnimationFrame;

  • Create the ini script for Jest in ./src/specs/index.js

    /* eslint-disable */
import polyfill from './polyfill';
import Enzyme from 'enzyme';
import Adapter from 'enzyme-adapter-react-16';

Enzyme.configure({ adapter: new Adapter() });

  • Finally inform jest.config about ini script:

    //...
setupFiles: ['<rootDir>/src/specs/index.js'],

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Setup a project with Webpack4 and learn some React concepts along the way

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