Caio Alonso

Personal React App Starter for Babel 7, Webpack 4

Here's a personal record of the steps I take to start a React app from zero, understanding what every single dependency does.

If you just want a clean React starting point, clone the repository:

git clone https://github.com/caioalonso/react-boilerplate

Start here:

mkdir projectname
cd projectname
mkdir src
touch src/index.html
touch src/index.js
npm init -y

Now the dependencies:

npm add --save-dev webpack webpack-cli html-webpack-plugin html-loader webpack-dev-server \
@babel/core babel-loader @babel/preset-env @babel/preset-react \
react react-dom \
prettier

• webpack bundles js modules, css, compresses images, etc;
• webpack-cli cli commands for webpack;
• html-webpack-plugin generates the index.html with the correct hashes etc;
• html-loader helps the webpack plugin deal with HTML files;
• webpack-dev-server serves a local self-refreshing version of the app;
• @babel/core core of the Babel compiler, most of the official Babel stuff sits under their @ scope;
• babel-loader is a Webpack loader to use Babel in it;
• @babel/preset-env smart Babel preset that changes depending on which platform you're compiling to;
• @babel/preset-react a Babel preset for compiling React stuff (JSX etc);
• react just what is needed for defining React components;
• react-dom React renderer for the web;
• prettier help keep js and css pretty;

Scripts in package.json:

"scripts": {
	"start": "webpack-dev-server --open --mode development",
    "build": "webpack --mode production",
}

Import the presets in .babelrc:

{
  "presets": [
    "@babel/preset-env",
    "@babel/preset-react"
  ]
}

Import the loaders and plugins in webpack.config.js:

const HtmlWebPackPlugin = require("html-webpack-plugin");

module.exports = {
  module: {
    rules: [
      {
        test: /\.js$/,
        exclude: /node_modules/,
        use: {
          loader: "babel-loader"
        }
      },
      {
        test: /\.html$/,
        use: [
          {
            loader: "html-loader"
          }
        ]
      }
    ]
  },
  plugins: [
    new HtmlWebPackPlugin({
      template: "./src/index.html",
      filename: "./index.html"
    })
  ]
};

Now edit src/index.html and src/index.js however you'd like, run npm start to start the dev server, run npm run build to compile it all into dist.