ts-react-redux-startup

TypeScript redux configuration project

Build

npm run build

Run

npm run dev

Steps

Notes I took when creating this project

• Installation
  • npm i -S vash
    • Template engine. You could just send html file instead.
  • npm i -S serve-favicon
  • npm i -S redux-thunk
    • Used to allow async actions
  • npm i -S redux
  • npm i -S react-router
  • npm i -S react-redux
  • npm i -S react-dom
  • npm i -S react
  • npm i -S jquery
  • npm i -S history
  • npm i -S express
  • npm i -S compression
    • Optimize server
  • npm i -S clone
    • Like Object.assign but does a deep copy
  • npm i -D @types/chai
  • npm i -D @types/clone
  • npm i -D @types/express
  • npm i -D @types/history
  • npm i -D @types/jquery
  • npm i -D @types/mocha
  • npm i -D @types/node
  • npm i -D @types/react
  • npm i -D @types/react-dom
  • npm i -D @types/react-redux
  • npm i -D @types/react-router
  • npm i -D @types/redux
  • npm i -D @types/redux-thunk
  • npm i -D @types/webpack
  • npm i -D autoprefixer
    • Add browser prefix on css
  • npm i -D babel
  • npm i -D babel-core
  • npm i -D babel-loader
  • npm i -D babel-polyfill
  • npm i -D babel-preset-es2015
  • npm i -D babel-preset-stage-0
  • npm i -D chai
  • npm i -D css-loader
  • npm i -D [email protected]
    • Used to generate a CSS file from imports instead of a JS
  • npm i -D file-loader
  • npm i -D mocha
  • npm i -D postcss-loader
  • npm i -D precss
    • Allows the use o SASS like styles without SASS
  • npm i -D rimraf
  • npm i -D style-loader
  • npm i -D supervisor
  • npm i -D ts-loader
  • npm i -D typescript@beta
  • npm i -D webpack@beta
• Project configuration and flow
  • tsconfig.json – TypeScript configuration
    • “target”: “es6”
      • Allows the use of async/await
    • “jsx”: “react”
      • Compiles tsx files into plain JavaScript
    • “skipLibCheck”: true
      • Ignore errors from definitions, since it is still in beta there are a few issues
  • .babelrc – Babel configuration
    • { “presets”: [ “es2015”, “stage-0” ] }
      • Allows everything
  • webpack.config.js – Webpack configuration
    • context
      • Defines root path context for webpack, probably always set it to __dirname (defaults to process.cwd())
    • entry
      • app
        • Where to start building files, grabs index and follow requires
    • output
      • path
        • Output folder location
      • publicPath
        • Application route to static files
      • filename
        • Output filename
          • [name] – entry name
    • resolve
      • extensions
        • Apply loaders on defined extensions
        • “Empty” extension (”) allows parsing of files without extensions
    • postcss
      • Callback function for postcss-loader
      • precss
        • Parse SASS like styles
      • autoprefixer
        • Add prefix on browser specific styles
    • module
      • loaders
        • { test: /.tsx?$/, loader: ‘babel!ts’, include: /src|spec/, }
          • Builds ts and tsx from src and spec folder using ts-loader then babel-loader
        • { test: /.s?css$/, loader: ExtractTextPlugin.extract({ fallbackLoader: ‘style’, loader: ‘css!postcss’ }), include: /src/, }
          • Builds css from src folder using postcss, precss, autoprefixer, css, style
    • plugins
      • new ExtractTextPlugin({ filename: ‘app.css’, disable: false, allChunks: true })
        • Extract contents and add to file, useful to generate css files
  • app.js – App configuration
    • app.use(compression())
      • Enable gzip from server making requests smaller
      • Note: If you are using webpack-dev-middleware and/or webpack-hot-middleware register these before compression, or it will interfere
    • app.use(favicon(path))
      • Setup favicon
    • app.use(‘/static’, express.static(path))
      • Makes routes to /static render static content from folder path
    • app.set(‘view engine’, ‘vash’)
      • Setup express to require(‘vash’) when rendering views
    • app.set(‘views’, path)
      • Setup root folder of views
    • app.engine(‘cshtml’, vash.renderFile)
      • Add support to cshtml to be rendered as vash views. This leverages VSCode razor editor
  • index.js – Server startup
    • app.use(‘/api’, require(‘./src/api’))
      • Uses express.Router to create routes under ‘/api’
    • app.use((req, res) => …)
      • Catch-all route which will render index.cshtml view
    • app.listen(…)
      • Starts the server
  • src/index.tsx – Redux starting point
    • createStore(reducers, applyMiddleware(thunk))
      • Create a single application store using all reducers
        • State becomes: state.app, state.about…
      • thunk allows async actions
    • <Provider store={ store }>
      • Setup redux store
      • <Router history={ browserHistory } children={ Routes } />
        • Setup routes
  • src/routes.tsx – Setup routes
    • - - Accessing ‘/’ on the browser will render the App container
  • src/components/app/index.tsx – Redux container
    • class App extends React<any, any>
      • Creates a react component
    • connect(mapStateToProps)
      • Converts state returned by the reducer into props for the component
        • Uses static propTypes to inject properties
  • src/actions/about.ts – export functions that a component can request
    • mirror
      • A helper function I created to make object value equal to its key, with a prefix (namespace) to differentiate actions since the entire application goes through the same dispatcher
    • changeText()
      • Makes an ajax request and calls dispatch on the callback
      • Note: This is only possible because o thunk middleware, otherwise you have to return a plain object
  • src/reducers/about.ts – State for about container
    • Export a default function that handle actions when something is dispatched
    • Should return a new object
      • Don’t reassign the state, make a copy. Unless it falls on default which means “the dispatched action has nothing to do with this reducer so return the same state for it”
      • Keep in mind
        • Object.assign does not do a deep copy, that’s why I included clone

v1.1.0

• Upgrade to react-router 4
  • browserHistory no longer available
    • Use import { createBrowserHistory } from 'history'; instead
  • Installed react-router-redux
    • Use import { syncHistoryWithStore } from 'react-router-redux'; to create redux routes
    • Create history with const history = syncHistoryWithStore(createBrowserHistory() as any, store);
    • Add routing to reducers
      • import { routerReducer as routing } from 'react-router-redux';
• Add ts-node and rename index and app to .ts files
  • Change start script to use ts-node
  • Add ts-node*/ to gitignore
• Add support for webpack-dev-middleware when using docker
  • Add to middleware config watchOptions: { poll: 300 }
• Change view engine default extension to cshtml intead of vash
• Add webpack-hot-middleware
  • Configure with app.use(require('webpack-hot-middleware')(compiler));
  • On the startup react script added module.hot.accept
• Migrate webpack to v2
  • Custom properties are no longer allowed
  • Loaders must include -loader
  • Added postcss config on LoaderOptionsPlugin
  • Removed invalid empty extension to resolve

v1.2.0

• Optimize webpack to use DllPlugin
  • Created a new webpack config file for vendor-only
  • Added DllPlugin
  • Referenced the Dll on the app webpack config file
• Changed to react-router-dom
  • Route structure changes
  • Added Switch ("The public API for rendering the first that matches.")
• Added libraries
  • react-router-dom
  • node-sass
    • peerDependency for sass-loader, allows the use of SASS
  • bootstrap
  • fontawesome
  • jquery
  • awesome-typescript-loader
    • Better ts-loader which increases performance
  • sass-loader
    • Webpack loader for sass
  • url-loader
    • Transforms files into base64 urls, you can specify a limit and if it goes over then file-loader extracts as a file
  • extendify
    • Merge objects handling each type in a specific way
    • Used to merge webpack configuration
• Changed code so it assumes development environment if NODE_ENV is not production

v1.3.0

• Components now have typed props and state
  • Had to use (connect as any) as the definitions are not working in the current scenario
• Added experimentalDecorators to allow @connect above the component rather than exporting bellow as a function call

v1.4.0

• Add fontawesome example
• Fix bootstrap
• Refactor actions, reducer
• Update tslint
• Add sass lint and lint scripts