I'm building my first semi-major MERN app with Redux, without a tutorial. It's really challenging, but a ton of fun.
The project I am building is, essentially, a simple re-engineering of Zillow's API (they have a few, I'm after the more basic of the property search results).
I am using the zillow npm module and want to add what appears to be a pretty popular autocomplete Search plug-in.
My big challenge this week has been diving into the build tools. I read thru the webpack docs over the last couple days, then felt solid enough to try building out my Search functionality, which will return results and a map eventually.
It should be noted, I'm using a scaffolding tool developed by a guy who publishes a lot of good React tutorials (from which I basically learned ReactJS -- it's called turbo360). Right now, I am using webpack 4. I just did a fresh git commit: https://github.com/ScorpIan555/real-estate-app/blob/master/webpack.config.js
I have, so far, read a bit of the Babel docs. I piped in .js extentions to the .jsx test for the babel-loader, thinking perhaps that would get it?
What I'm a bit confused by is that it seems to be tripping over a file written in ES5 (from the geocoder npm module I am trying to use). So, I'm wondering if I should be configuring my babel-loader to not try to transpile ES5 modules or what.
This is the module I am trying to utilize, it looks fairly popular and has a recent commit. I also looked at its webpack.config.js file and tried to apply that to mine...
https://github.com/abec/react-autosuggest-geocoder/blob/master/webpack.config.js
I am closing this as I received assistance on a Slack channel. This plugin uses experimental code which I do not wish to use on my app. I will use another plug-in. I was looking for help with my webpack.config and am reliably told it is fine. Thanks to all who viewed this question!
Related
I created an application using create react app, then I did the npm run eject command and I get a list of all dependencies. Yes, I do not have webpack config files, which will be if I create my own webpack. I see only one advantage that create react app adds extra dependencies that are not needed. All other settings, as I understand it, I can add the cra application to my own webpack. Can you please tell me why it is so important to create your own webpack? I just don't see much difference between builds. I have read a lot of articles and have not found objectively strong advantages can you tell me
I'm confused why all the React tutorials I'm using to learn React have me installing libraries through npm rather than importing through CDN's (React, Redux, Material UI, firebase, etc). I thought CDN's were more efficient.
Any guidance on this would be helpful (this is my first time using VS code and installing packages like this, the only other website I've programmed I just imported bootstrap and jquery through CDN and coded in notepad++ :/)
While you can of course use a CDN to import scripts into your application (with, for example a <script> tag) npm is useful in the fact that when you build your React app it will bundle all the required modules together.
This can be advantageous in the fact that your users don't have to download any scripts when your application loads (which can take some users with slower connections a long time) since everything is bundled within your React app. Some applications depend on a lot of dependencies, and forcing every new user to download each script individually can cause speed issues.
At the end of the day, I don't think there is a right or wrong answer as to whether you should use a CDN or NPM, just understand that when you use NPM it bundles the required scripts into your app when you run npm run build instead of the user having to download them when they visit your site.
CDN's will only get you so far. In the industry you're going to be expected to have some experience with npm/yarn. If you keeping going down the frontend rabbit hole, you'll eventually run into things like Webpack and Babble which will help make your Javascript a lot more efficient and backwards compatible. Installing things through npm/yarn will also often offer a lot in terms of providing you with a better development environment (things like react-scripts, eslint, prettier, etc).
I'm looking into creating an app with typescript and angular 1.6.0. But everywhere I look is using webpack, babel, grunt, gulp, there is no single consensus on which is the best way to proceed with an app like this.
Anyone got any hints?
Thank you.
Do you have a specific need for using angular 1.6.0? As opposed to creating an angular2 project?
You can get more information here: Angular-cli
Angular cli currently includes webpack and you will not need to use gulp or grunt at all. In addition to the angular cli bundling your app together it allows easy build for Ahead of Time Compilation and tree shaking. Having these two features is nice for when you are ready to deploy your application to a production server you can bundle the application into a small package and serve a small amount of JS files.
Using the angular cli also helps you to code with best practices within an angular2 application. You generate new components/directives/pipes with a simple ng generate [component] [name] command.
I would strongly suggest reading through the angular quickstart for ts guide located here: Angular-Quickstart
Also, if you do not want to generate your own projects using the angular-cli. There are various templates online that you can start your application with.
Good luck!
If you are planning to start from scratch, then why not Angular2 ?
My suggestion is Typescript2 + Angular2 with webpack. As stated by #Andy Angular-cli is good to go.
I am very new to React and IDEs for frontend development.
I am trying to use React in WebStorm. I made a new project with "React starter kit" in WebStorm. Now a whole bunch of packages got created under my project. Where should I start writing my react code?
Also I have read that I need to add library "node.js v1.8.1 core modules" and "Node.js Globals" but I'm not able to find them. I am attaching snippets for better understanding.
If you are starting with react-native you better not start with a "starter-kit".
I recommend you start form the very beginning, with the simple tutorial in the react-native docs:
https://facebook.github.io/react-native/docs/getting-started.html#content
After you get some familiarity with it, you will be able to use a stater-kit more properly.
As for the project in your WebStorm, you need to look for the files under the src directory to edit the react code.
Good luck
I'm trying to set up a client-side app workflow with yeoman (http://yeoman.io/), and as I'm coming from Rails background, I'm used to the niceties of the asset pipeline, which is backed by Sprockets (https://github.com/sstephenson/sprockets).
I'm struggling to make all the parts play nice with each other, and already spent a few hours trying to figure it out.
The first question that comes to mind is, is there a well established (e.g. convention over configuration, like in Rails world) way of developing a client side application with yeoman? Some definitive guide (besides the basic webapp-generator guide), perhaps?
Some suggest using requirejs (which I rather not use, because while it simplifies things in development, I'll need to jump through hoops to package the app (e.g. use Almond.js or AMDclean.js, or incur the unneeded overhead of requirejs).
My setup is:
Coffeescript, Backbone + Marionette, Handlebars for templates and ZURB Foundation with SASS.
What I'd like to accomplish in the end is the following setup, while using bower for managing the 3rd party dependencies:
In development:
Have something like Rails' manifest for javascript, so I can declare the order of dependencies, which will exploded into the the index.html
For all .scss files a .css entry added to index.html
Each file watched and compiled when needed
In production (dist):
All .scss files compiled, minified and concatenated to app.css
All bower files concatenated and minified to vendor.js
All application coffeescript files compiled, minified and concatenated to app.js
All templates compiled, minified and and concatenated to templates.js
index.html modified to include only those four files.
Is there something like this setup available?
I'm also open for suggestions and/or other alternative workflows.
Yeomam won't get you as close to a Rails workflow as you might expect. My two cents is that you take a look at something like Middleman has it does what you want out of the box.
Yeoman way
Using generators
You can use Yeoman generators and try to find out the combination of generators that will better suit the stack you are looking for, from what you describe I might take a look at:
webapp
backbone
maryo
At this point most of your requirements (both development and production) would be fulfilled:
a well defined project structure
compile coffeeScript and .scss
watch and compile
generators for model, view, collection, ...
compile and minify all files for production
You can use multiple generators to customise your own stack, every time that Yeoman detects that a generator overwrites a existing file it will prompt what to do, and you should be able to manage the conflict by yourself. Some framework-generators will obviously clash (it wouldn't make sense to try to use a angular generator on top of backbone).
Fine tuning
You can use sub-generators to scaffold more specific parts of your app, see Addy Osmani video.
Building generators
If you feel limited by some of the choices that a generator might impose (e.g. you prefer browserify instead of requirejs) you might want to fork a generator and add that as an option. You can even build a generator form scratch that will build your custom stack!
Grunt and Bower way
Yeoman is build on top of this two, but you can opt out at any moment and build your own stack using this two. You can add your dependencies through bower, and your tasks using grunt. There are plenty of examples that can give you some guidance, you could start with Yeoman webapp. There are also good examples at github like juanghurtado/puppeteer.
There are 3 files that you must keep an eye:
package.json — all you node dependencies go in here
bower.json — to manage the client dependencies
Gruntfile.js — here you define the tasks
Wrapping up
Maybe I'm stating the obvious but Yeoman does some magic work and helps you managing Grunt and bower, this magic only happens when you fully understand how this 2 work. So I would recommend that first you dive into some code and fully understand how Grunt and Bower work, and then you may use Yeoman magic.
Some other tools
You asked for some suggestions, here it goes:
gulp.js An alternative to Grunt. More you dive into Grunt more you will want Gulp (IMHO).
browserify An alternative to Requiere. Read this
assemble Static site generator for Node.js, Grunt.js, and Yeoman
Roman,
Answer for your first question, here is a guide on how to use Yeoman: http://code.tutsplus.com/tutorials/building-apps-with-the-yeoman-workflow--net-33254
If you want to use coffeescript by default, just pass the --coffee param
yo webapp --coffee
handling the assets order you can handle from the index.html file.
When you want to get the app ready for production just type the
grunt build
that will unify and minify all of your assets and throw it all dist folder.
To customise what you have in the build process you would have to write your own or customise the grunt build task, so that it will do exactly what you want.
Hope i gave you some useful information :)
Not an answer to my original question, but rather a pointer for someone who'd like to implement the same workflow I was looking for. I ended up writing a custom Gruntfile, using the grunt-injector to do the "explode the assets to the index.html" part, grunt-bower-install to add bower assets and configuring the grunt-usemin, grunt-contrib-concat, grunt-contrib-cssmin and grunt-contrib-uglify accordingly.