This Project Is Deprecated

React Hot Loader 3 is on the horizon, and you can try it today (boilerplate branch, upgrade example). It fixes some long-standing issues with both React Hot Loader and React Transform, and is intended as a replacement for both. The docs are not there yet, but they will be added before the final release. For now, this commit is a good reference.

A React Transform that catches errors inside render() function and renders a React component with an error message instead.

It’s up to you to choose the React component to render an error message. For example, you may use redbox-react that imitates React Native “red screen of death”.

This is highly experimental tech. If you’re enthusiastic about hot reloading, by all means, give it a try, but don’t bet your project on it. Either of the technologies it relies upon may change drastically or get deprecated any day. You’ve been warned 😉 .

This technology exists to prototype next-generation React developer experience. Please don’t use it blindly if you don’t know the underlying technologies well. Otherwise you are likely to get disillusioned with JavaScript tooling.

No effort went into making this user-friendly yet. The goal is to eventually kill this technology in favor of less hacky technologies baked into React. These projects are not long term.

First, install the Babel plugin:

npm install --save-dev babel-plugin-react-transform

Then, install the transform:

npm install --save-dev react-transform-catch-errors

Finally, install the component for rendering errors, for example:

npm install --save-dev redbox-react

You may also use a custom component instead.

Now edit your .babelrc to include extra.babel-plugin-react-transform.
It must be an array of the transforms you want to use:

{
  "presets": ["es2015", "stage-0"],
  "env": {
    // only enable it when process.env.NODE_ENV is 'development' or undefined
    "development": {
      "plugins": [["react-transform", {
        "transforms": [{
          "transform": "react-transform-catch-errors",
          // now go the imports!
          "imports": [

            // the first import is your React distribution
            // (if you use React Native, pass "react-native" instead)

            "react",

            // the second import is the React component to render error
            // (it can be a local path too, like "./src/ErrorReporter")

            "redbox-react"

            // the third import is OPTIONAL!
            // when specified, its export is used as options to the reporter.
            // see specific reporter's docs for the options it needs.

            // it will be imported from different files so it either has to be a Node module
            // or a file that you configure with Webpack/Browserify/SystemJS to resolve correctly.
            // for example, see https://github.com/gaearon/babel-plugin-react-transform/pull/28#issuecomment-144536185

            // , "my-reporter-options"
          ]
        }]
        // note: you can put more transforms into array
        // this is just one of them!
      }]]
    }
  }
}

It is up to you to ensure that the transform is not enabled when you compile the app in production mode. The easiest way to do this is to put React Transform configuration inside env.development in .babelrc and ensure you’re calling babel with NODE_ENV=development. See babelrc documentation for more details about using env option.

MIT