Universal React

This boilerplate aims at solving the MVP (Minimal Viable Product) of a universal app while trying to keep the base unopinionated elsewhere and simple to read and extend.

 Features

• Universal routing react-router
• Redux
• Hot reloading
• Title, meta, css, and scripts overridable by each component react-helmet
• Universal data fetching/rehydration on the client isomorphic-fetch
• No other templating engines - React from root down
• 404 and redirect handling
• Shared app config
• Webpack and Babel

Since there are so many opinions on how to use css (vanilla, sass, less, react css modules etc) I've left it up to you.

 Install & run

npm i && npm start

Go to http://localhost:3000/.

Build

npm run build

This will create a dist/ folder with a app.min.js which will be used on any environment which isn't undefined (i.e. not local).

npm run start-prod

This will build and then run your app with environment set to production, so that app.min.js and config/production.js are used.

Adding routes

Add your routes in Routes.js.

<Route path='users' component={Users} />

Title and Meta

The parent App.js defines the base title and meta in a Helmet component. Any sub-component can override/add properties (even adding scripts and css). See the react-helmet docs for more info.

Config

You can store app settings under app/config/. A file matching process.env.NODE_ENV will be loaded, for example app/config/production.js. If process.env.NODE_ENV is undefined it will fallback to app/config/default.js. You can access the correct config with:

import config from './config';

Data fetching and client hydration

Read the Redux guide if you are new to redux. Write Redux actions and stores as normal, and if the action creator is asynchronous then it should return a Promise (or a Promise.all) in the inner function.

You should write dispatches for actions that must be called for the container to be ready:

static readyOnActions(dispatch, params) {
    return Promise.all([
        dispatch(UserActions.fetchUserIfNeeded(params.id))
    ]);
}

You should also invoke the actions in componentDidMount. This ensures that if the component is reached on the client, then the same actions will be invoked. It's up to the action to figure out if fetches for data need to be made or not:

componentDidMount() {
    User.readyOnActions(this.props.dispatch, this.props.params);
}