React Redux minimal starter kit (boilerplate)

Redux-Minimal is a minimalist react-redux starter kit (boilerplate) which let's you build rich real world apps. It's not as light as some starter kits which only let you write a simple hello world app and then you have to struggle with installing all the other stuff yourself. And it's also not as packed as other starter kits which confuse you massively with its folder/file structure and arcane scripts.

Redux-Minimal contains the bare minimum to develop a real world complex app and it also comes with a small users app that will show you how to code certain features. A demo of the app can be seen here: http://redux-minimal-app.catalin-luntraru.com

Getting started

1. Before you start working with redux-minimal, you first need to setup your environment. Make sure you have the following installed:

   • Git
   • NodeJs and Npm
   • an IDE to write js code in, for example Webstorm

2. Once your environment is prepared, open a command prompt (terminal) and type in the following:

   1cd C:\js\node\apps
   2git clone https://github.com/catalin-luntraru/redux-minimal.git hello-world
   3cd hello-world
   4npm install
   5npm start

3. Then open your http://localhost:8080/ to see the included small users app. Congratulations! You can now write react redux code.

4. For more productivity you can install Chrome's React Developer Tools and Redux Dev Tools

Video tutorial

I made a video tutorial series, to help people out getting started with react and redux. It covers the basics, like what is react, redux, etc, and also setting up the environment with redux-minimal and guiding you step by step with creating the demo users app. You will also understand why code was written this way, where refactoring was needed, etc.

Let's learn React and Redux with Javascript's new ES6 syntax, from Beginner to Intermediate to Advanced

Why use this?

Redux-Minimal contains the minimum npm packages you need to have installed in order to build a react redux real-world app containing:

• a proper file/folder structure
• pages (routes)
• forms with validation
• real-world API asynchronous requests
• unit tests
• bootstrap react components
• sass
• hot loader for ease of development
• redux tools
• js and css bundle files built for development or production

The code and implementation are minimal, which lets you focus on the real app, not the webpack, babel, gulp etc boilerplate files, which honestly you shouldn't even bother with.

Installed packages

Here are the npm packages that redux-minimal installs:

Feature	Packages	Benefits
React	react	A declarative, efficient, and flexible JavaScript library for building user interfaces
	react-dom	Serves as the entry point of the DOM-related rendering paths
	react-hot-loader	Tweak React components in real time when developing
Redux	redux	A predictable state container for JavaScript apps
	react-redux	React bindings for Redux
	redux-freeze	Redux middleware that prevents state from being mutated anywhere in the app
Router	react-router	Declarative routing for React. Your app has pages now
	react-router-redux	Simple bindings to keep react-router and redux in sync
Bootstrap	react-bootstrap	Bootstrap 3 components built with React
	react-router-bootstrap	Integration between React Router and React-Bootstrap
Forms	redux-form	A Higher Order Component using react-redux to keep form state in a Redux store
Asynchronous	redux-saga	Asynchronous API calls made easy with Saga
Unit tests	mocha	Simple javascript test framework
	enzyme	JavaScript Testing utilities for React components
	react-addons-test-utils	Required by enzyme. Makes it easy to test React components
	ignore-styles	Ignore imported style files when running in Node
Sass	node-sass	Mature, stable, and powerful CSS extension language
Webpack	webpack	A bundler for javascript, css and others
	webpack-dev-server	Serves the app at http://localhost:8080/
	extract-text-webpack-plugin	Webpack plugin that builds the css bundle file
	style-loader	Webpack module that loads styles
	css-loader	Webpack module that loads css styles
	sass-loader	Webpack module that loads sass styles
	clean-webpack-plugin	Webpack module to remove previous build files
Babel	babel-core	Compiler that helps node.js and the browser to understand the new js syntax
	babel-runtime	Helps node.js to understand the new js syntax
	babel-preset-es2015	Helps node.js to use ES2015 Javascript syntax
	babel-preset-react	Helps node.js to use React's JSX syntax
	babel-preset-stage-3	Helps node.js to use the spread operator
	babel-loader	Helps webpack to compile the new javascript syntax
	babel-polyfill	Helps the browser to understand the new js syntax
	whatwg-fetch	Helps the browser to use fetch

Sample app

Redux-Minimal also contains a small sample app that let's you manage some users with the following features:

• a list of users with pagination
• add a new user
• edit an existing user
• delete a user

The sample app provides you with basically most of the things you will need when building a new real-world app.

The demo for the app can be found here: http://redux-minimal-app.catalin-luntraru.com

Build your own app

1. Open webpack.config.js and change the app_root value from src_users to src

2. Run npm start

3. Congratulations! You now have a blank Hello world starting app

Scripts

Besides the start script, there are also other scripts

npm run <script>	What it does
start	Starts the app at http://localhost:8080/. The bundle js/css files are stored in memory
test	Starts the unit testing using all the files found in the test folder
test-watch	Starts the unit testing and watches for changes to re-run the tests
build-dev	Builds the js/css bundle files in the public folder. Adds debugging code for development
build-prod	Builds the js/css bundle minified files in the public folder

License

This project is licensed under the MIT license, Copyright (c) 2016 Catalin Luntraru.