React + Node Starter

for Heroku deployment

Overview

This is a simple starter to get you up and running for React projects. This is intended to provide:

• a lightweight webpack config (for development and production)
• some helpful tooling for development workflow
• a similar setup to what you'll see in the wild
• Heroku-ready deployment setup
• Introducing react router redux for routing

Running

Install dependencies: $ npm install or $ yarn

Fire up a development server: $ npm run dev

Once the server is running, you can visit http://localhost:3000/

File layout

• Frontend React
  • The top level application Container is in frontend/containers/AppContainer.js
  • CSS styles are in frontend/assets/stylesheets/base.scss
• Backend Express
  • Entry point is server.js
  • API routes are under backend/routes.js
  • API routes are served under http://localhost:3000/api

Production Build

To build your production assets and run the server:

$ npm start

Deploying to Heroku

This app is set up for deployment to Heroku!

This assumes you have already have a Heroku account and have the Heroku CLI installed

$ heroku login
$ heroku create -a name-of-your-app
$ git push heroku master
$ heroku open

Heroku will follow the build command in your package.json and compile assets with webpack.prod.config.js. It runs the Express web server in server.js.

If you're unfamiliar with Heroku deployment (or just need a refresher), they have a really great walkthrough here.