Switch over to Create React App on Existing Project? - reactjs

Question

I have an existing application that I am using "webpack-serve" as it was recommended to me by the developer(at that time he was not going to update webpack-dev-server anymore).
Anyways now it is deprecated and not being used, I got to back to webpack-dev-server but I am thinking if I should just go through the effort and try to use something like "Create React App" as I don't really know if I can use these old wepack.js files I made for webpack-serve and they also don't seem to work 100% as everytime I try to build a production build it gives me a dev build.
webpack.common.js
const path = require("path");
const HtmlWebpackPlugin = require("html-webpack-plugin");
const CleanWebpackPlugin = require("clean-webpack-plugin");
const webpack = require('webpack');
module.exports = {
entry: ["#babel/polyfill", "./src/index.js"],
output: {
// filename and path are required
filename: "main.js",
path: path.resolve(__dirname, "dist"),
publicPath: '/'
},
module: {
rules: [
{
// JSX and JS are all .js
test: /\.js$/,
exclude: /node_modules/,
use: {
loader: "babel-loader",
}
},
{
test: /\.(eot|svg|ttf|woff|woff2)$/,
use: [
{
loader: 'file-loader',
options: {}
}
]
},
{
test: /\.(png|jpg|gif)$/,
use: [
{
loader: 'file-loader',
options: {}
}
]
}
]
},
plugins: [
new CleanWebpackPlugin(["dist"]),
new HtmlWebpackPlugin({
template: "./src/index.html"
}),
new webpack.IgnorePlugin(/^\.\/locale$/, /moment$/),
new webpack.DefinePlugin({
'process.env.NODE_ENV': JSON.stringify(process.env.NODE_ENV)
})
]
};
webpack.dev
const path = require("path");
const merge = require("webpack-merge");
const convert = require("koa-connect");
const proxy = require("http-proxy-middleware");
const historyApiFallback = require("koa2-connect-history-api-fallback");
const common = require("./webpack.common.js");
module.exports = merge(common, {
// Provides process.env.NODE_ENV with value development.
// Enables NamedChunksPlugin and NamedModulesPlugin.
mode: "development",
devtool: "inline-source-map",
// configure `webpack-serve` options here
serve: {
// The path, or array of paths, from which static content will be served.
// Default: process.cwd()
// see https://github.com/webpack-contrib/webpack-serve#options
content: path.resolve(__dirname, "dist"),
add: (app, middleware, options) => {
// SPA are usually served through index.html so when the user refresh from another
// location say /about, the server will fail to GET anything from /about. We use
// HTML5 History API to change the requested location to the index we specified
app.use(historyApiFallback());
app.use(
convert(
// Although we are using HTML History API to redirect any sub-directory requests to index.html,
// the server is still requesting resources like JavaScript in relative paths,
// for example http://localhost:8080/users/main.js, therefore we need proxy to
// redirect all non-html sub-directory requests back to base path too
proxy(
// if pathname matches RegEx and is GET
(pathname, req) => pathname.match("/.*/") && req.method === "GET",
{
// options.target, required
target: "http://localhost:8080",
pathRewrite: {
"^/.*/": "/" // rewrite back to base path
}
}
)
)
);
}
},
module: {
rules: [
{
test: /\.(sa|sc|c)ss$/,
use: ["style-loader", "css-loader", "sass-loader"]
}
]
}
});
webpack.prod
const merge = require("webpack-merge");
const MiniCssExtractPlugin = require("mini-css-extract-plugin");
const OptimizeCSSAssetsPlugin = require("optimize-css-assets-webpack-plugin");
var BundleAnalyzerPlugin = require('webpack-bundle-analyzer').BundleAnalyzerPlugin;
const common = require("./webpack.common.js");
module.exports = merge(common, {
// Provides process.env.NODE_ENV with value production.
// Enables FlagDependencyUsagePlugin, FlagIncludedChunksPlugin,
// ModuleConcatenationPlugin, NoEmitOnErrorsPlugin, OccurrenceOrderPlugin,
// SideEffectsFlagPlugin and UglifyJsPlugin.
mode: "production",
devtool: "source-map",
// see https://webpack.js.org/configuration/optimization/
optimization: {
// minimize default is true
minimizer: [
// Optimize/minimize CSS assets.
// Solves extract-text-webpack-plugin CSS duplication problem
// By default it uses cssnano but a custom CSS processor can be specified
new OptimizeCSSAssetsPlugin({})
]
},
module: {
rules: [
{
test: /\.(sa|sc|c)ss$/,
// only use MiniCssExtractPlugin in production and without style-loader
use: [MiniCssExtractPlugin.loader, "css-loader", "sass-loader"]
}
]
},
plugins: [
// Mini CSS Extract plugin extracts CSS into separate files.
// It creates a CSS file per JS file which contains CSS.
// It supports On-Demand-Loading of CSS and SourceMaps.
// It requires webpack 4 to work.
new MiniCssExtractPlugin({
filename: "[name].css",
chunkFilename: "[id].css"
}),
new BundleAnalyzerPlugin()
]
});
Edit
If I where to go over to Create React App how would I handle this stuff?
I have a .babelrc with
"presets": ["#babel/env", "#babel/react"],
"plugins": [
["#babel/plugin-proposal-decorators", { "legacy": true }],
"#babel/plugin-transform-object-assign",
"#babel/plugin-proposal-object-rest-spread",
"transform-class-properties",
"emotion"
]
I think react-app takes care of some of the stuff but not sure if all. I also have if you noticed in webpack.common I am pollying filling everything, would I just need "react-app-polyfill."?
How can I add another "dev mode"
"scripts": {
"dev": "cross-env NODE_ENV=dev webpack-serve --config webpack.dev.js --open",
"prod": "cross-env NODE_ENV=prod webpack -p --config webpack.prod.js",
"qa": "cross-env NODE_ENV=QA webpack --config webpack.prod.js"
},
I need to setup the Node_ENV for QA as I have a check to point to my api that changes in each enviroment.

Answer 1

it's a simple as below today:
npx create-react-app .

Answer 2

I've had to do something like this a couple times. This has been my approach:
create-react-app my-app-cra // clean slate
npm i [list of dependencies] // minus any build, compile, transpile, etc. dependencies
Copy over my src folder, preserving as much of the structure as possible
npm start // and keep fingers crossed! Typically, a bit of manual work is involved
To preserve your git history:
Copy your src to a folder outside your repo
Clean your repo git rm -rf
Perform the above steps (create react app, install deps, copy src back in)
git add // If you preserve your folder structure, git will find the copied over files (and will notice a possible change in path) and handles gracefully, preserving history.

Answer 3

Both create-react-app and webpack 4 are good options and very simple. In my opinion, create-react-app is the most practical.
In order to conserve your git history, I recommend:
create a branch and go to it.
install and save the dependencies and dev-dependencies of create-react-app. you will see them in your package.json file.
do the configuration. use the create-react-app repo as an example.
if it works fine, return to your master branch and merge this branch with the migration.
Execute npm i in order to install the dependencies you added from your branch.