This template project is designed to allow for the quick setup of a React with Redux (React Redux) project using the Material UI framework and Webpack for bundling the code.

• template-frontend-react-redux-mui
  • Table of Contents:
  • Prerequisites
  • Setup
  • Babel & Webpack Configuration
    • Configuration using Environment Variables
    • Babel Configuration
    • Development and Production Build Modes
      • Development Builds
      • Production Build
  • Unit Testing
  • Docker Deployment

The following tools are required to set up or run this template:

• node v10.15.3
• npm v6.4.1 or Yarn v1.16.0

1. Clone the repo from https://github.com/FutureCitiesCatapult/template-frontend-react-redux-mui.git.
2. Navigate to the root directory of this new repo and run either of the commands below:

// with npm
npm run setup

// with yarn
yarn run setup

This setup script installs all of the required node packages in the root node_modules directory then scans for any vulnerabilities within the package files and automatically installs any compatible updates to vulnerable dependencies that were found.

A blank .env file is also created in the root directory (more on environment variables here).

The webpack.config.js uses the dotenv-webpack plugin alongside dotenv-defaults to expose any environment variables set in the .env or .env.defaults file in the root directory. These variables are available within the webpack configuration itself and also anywhere within the application in the format process.env.[VARIABLE].

The root .env.defaults file must only contain non-sensitive configuration variables and should be considered safe to commit to any version control system.

Any sensitive details, such as passwords or private keys, should be stored in the root .env file. This file should never be committed and accordingly is already listed within the root .gitignore file. The .env file also serves to overwrite any non-sensitive variables defined within the root .env.defaults file.

This project uses Babel to convert, transform and polyfill ECMAScript 2015+ code into a backwards compatible version of JavaScript.

As with webpack.config.js the environmental variables defined in .env.defaults and .env are available within the babel.config.js where Babel's configuration is programmatically created.

In webpack.config.js there's a common configuration object for both development and production builds called commonConfig which mainly handles loading for various file types. Extend this object with any modules or plugins which apply to both build modes.

Within a switch statement after the commonConfig object individual properties for both the development and production builds can be defined separately as needed.

Webpack will use the --mode flag it recieves when run to determine which build to bundle. This flag defaults to development.

A development build can be run in the following ways:

// with npm
npm run dev
// or
npm run dev:hot

// with yarn
yarn run dev
// or
yarn run dev:hot

Both the dev and dev:hot scripts use webpack-dev-server to serve a development build locally. Some options are configured already in the root .env.defaults and can be overriden in the root .env file or within the root webpack.config.js itself as required.

A production build can be run by the following command:

// with npm
npm run build

// with yarn
yarn run build

The build script will write an optimized and compressed build to the 'build' directory. If a different directory is required it will mean changing the .package.json's clean script as well as the output.path property of the webpack.config.json accordingly.

... to be continued

... to be continued