React Starter App

A React/Redux Starter Kit

NOTE: At this point the connection between to a backend experimental, and the data expected to be provided is being mocked in. See fixtures/contacts.json fixtures/messages.json

Achieving Good Code

Rewrite our existing code to:

Write code that is clean, easy to refactor, and easy to improve. This will require some experimentation. Try moving your component around the page. Does it still work? Put your component in a separate npm module. Can you do it? Reuse your component in another scenario. Does it handle more than one scenario?

Dev Setup

To Run locally, just install dependencies and run the server using npm.

Install dependencies

npm install

Start the Webpack Dev Server

npm start

You can browse to http://localhost:3333 to view your changes as you make them.

Hot Reloading

Webpack Hot Module Replacement is enabled in development mode npm start. It will load any changes you make in your react components, while keeping the page state (no page reload). This is great for working on layout, stye, and seeing your changes as you work.

Organization

Follow consistent organizational patterns, and use generators. The result will be clean consistent code, which is easy to understand, read, debug, and modify. Create new repeatable patterns when they are not provided. That way, we can keep things clean.

Components are all nested at the same level within the src/components directory. This enforces the React notion of reusable components, which can accept any sub components.

Redux Store, Actions, and reducers are located in the src/store directory, and organized by feature. For instance, all "message" related (store/action/reducer) functionality is located in the src/store/messages directory.

Developing

Add a New Component

Add a new component when needed.

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1. Reuse Components if Possible

Look into the components directory src/components. Components should be names identical to their corresponding PAXL components

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2. Use the Generators

To make it easier to avoid boilerplate, use the included generators.

Install the generator

npm generators:install ## Will prompt you for your password

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3. Create a new Component

Create a new "MyComponent" component

npm generators:component ## will prompt you for needed vars

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4. Create a new Action / Store

Create an action "addEvent" in the "calendar" reducer

npm generators:action ## will prompt you for needed vars

This generator will "wire up" you new store, action, reducer to the rootReducer. You can start using it right away! Your new reducer will perform a no-op by default. So, there won't be any consequences. But, all you need to do is to add a payload to your action, and a state mutation to your reducer... Reducers are initialized with an immutable Map from immutable.js. So, check out the docs at the link.

Immutable state prevents us from creating anomalous side effects. Javascript references can easily cause tricky behavior. Immutable solves that problem by preventing any direct modification of the state. Instead, state is copied, and the new copy is then modified and returned from your reducer. Immutable.js has all the nice functional sugar you need for manipulating Objects and Arrays.

Testing

Using Enzyme, write tests that cover any custom functionality. Code you wrote to do something unique or special must be tested. https://github.com/airbnb/enzyme/tree/master/docs

This is a great article for testing Redux: http://teropa.info/blog/2015/09/10/full-stack-redux-tutorial.html

Additional Resources

Libraries Used

React-Intl

Provides Declarative formatting for dates, numbers, and strings https://github.com/yahoo/react-intl/wiki/Components

Normalizr

https://github.com/paularmstrong/normalizr https://egghead.io/lessons/javascript-redux-normalizing-api-responses-with-normalizr

JSON Generator

http://www.json-generator.com/ This site is amazing for generating fake JSON data

Madoka

https://www.npmjs.com/package/madoka Amazing npm module for generating JSON