create-rails-react-app v0.0.1

Create Rails React App

Create full-stack apps with no build configuration.

Create Rails React App works with docker. If you don't have docker already, you should download it here. If something doesn’t work, please file an issue.

Quick Overview

npx create-rails-react-app -n my-app
cd my-app
make build && make start

If you've previously installed create-rails-react-app globally via npm install -g create-rails-react-app, we recommend you uninstall the package using npm uninstall -g create-rails-react-app to ensure that npx always uses the latest version.

Then open http://localhost:3000/ to see your app.

Get Started Immediately

You don’t need to install or configure tools like webpack or Babel. They are preconfigured and hidden so that you can focus on the code.

Create a project, and you’re good to go.

Creating an App

You’ll need to have Node 8.16.0 or Node 10.16.0 or later version on your local development machine (but it’s not required on the server). You can use nvm (macOS/Linux) or nvm-windows to switch Node versions between different projects.

To create a new app, you may choose one of the following methods:

npx

npx create-rails-react-app -n my-app

(npx is a package runner tool that comes with npm 5.2+ and higher, see instructions for older npm versions)

npm

npm init rails-react-app -n my-app

npm init <initializer> is available in npm 6+

Yarn

yarn create rails-react-app -n my-app

yarn create <starter-kit-package> is available in Yarn 0.25+

It will create a directory called my-app inside the current folder. Inside that directory, it will generate the initial project structure and install the transitive dependencies.

No configuration, only the files you need to build your app. Once the installation is done, you can open your project folder:

cd my-app

Inside the newly created project, you can run some built-in commands:

make build

Builds the entire docker infrastructure needed to run your app.

You should only run this command once after creating your project or right after cleaning your containers.

make start

Runs the app in development mode. Open http://localhost:3000 to view it in the browser.

The page will automatically reload if you make changes to the code.

make test

Runs the test framework.

Read more about Rails testing.

Read more about React testing.

Environment Variables

backend

create-rails-react-app uses Figaro to manage environment variables in Rails. In ./backend/config/application.yml, you can assign the variables you need in the environment you need them in (eg. production/development/test).

Required environment variables:

• DATABASE_PASSWORD Defaults to postgres
• REACT_URL Defaults to http://localhost:3000

frontend

All of your environment variables will need to be preceded with REACT_APP_. You will need to create an .env file in your project's frontend directory and assign the variables there. If you need to define variables depending on the environment you're in, you can simply append the environment name to the file name. You can refer to .env.development in your project's frontend directory for an example of this.

Required environment variables:

• REACT_APP_API_URL Defaults to http://localhost:3001

.gitignore

Remember to gitignore any environment variable files that hold sensitive information such as passwords or credentials of any kind.

Philosophy

• One Dependency: There is only one build dependency. It uses webpack, Babel, ESLint, and other amazing projects, but provides a cohesive curated experience on top of them.

• No Configuration Required: You don't need to configure anything. A reasonably good configuration is handled for you so you can focus on writing code.

What's included?

Your environment will have everything you need to build a modern full-stack Rails/React app:

• Ruby on Rails, PostgreSQL, and Rufo support for the backend.
• React, JSX, ES6, and TypeScript syntax support for the frontend.
• Language extras beyond ES6 like the object spread operator.
• Autoprefixed CSS, so you don’t need-webkit- or other prefixes.
• A fast interactive unit test runner with built-in support for coverage reporting.
• A live development server that warns about common mistakes.
• Hassle-free updates for the above tools with a single dependency.

Popular Alternatives

Create Rails React App is a great fit for:

• Learning React and Rails in a comfortable and feature-rich development environment.
• Starting new full-stack applications.
• Creating examples with React and Rails for your libraries and components.

Here are a few common cases where you might want to try something else:

• If you want to try React or Rails without hundreds of transitive build tool dependencies, consider using an online sandbox instead.

• If you need to publish a React component, nwb can also do this, as well as Neutrino's react-components preset.

• If you want to do server rendering with React and Node.js, check out Next.js or Razzle.

• If your website is mostly static (for example, a portfolio or a blog), consider using Gatsby instead.

• Finally, if you need more customization, check out Neutrino and its React preset.

All of the above tools can work with little to no configuration.

Credits

Documentation mostly resembles that of create-react-app

The combination, Rails + PostgreSQL + Docker Compose, is just a result I followed Docker Compose's official instruction.

Bootstrapped with create-react-app-typescript.

License

Create Rails React App is open source software licensed as MIT.