Search icon CANCEL
Subscription
0
Cart icon
Your Cart (0 item)
Close icon
You have no products in your basket yet
Save more on your purchases now! discount-offer-chevron-icon
Savings automatically calculated. No voucher code required
Arrow left icon
Explore Products
Best Sellers
New Releases
Books
Videos
Audiobooks
Learning Hub
Conferences
Free Learning
Arrow right icon
React 16 Tooling
React 16 Tooling

React 16 Tooling: Master essential cutting-edge tools, such as create-react-app, Jest, and Flow

Arrow left icon
Profile Icon Adam Boduch Profile Icon Christopher Pitt
Arrow right icon
£19.99 £28.99
Book Apr 2018 298 pages 1st Edition
eBook
£19.99 £28.99
Print
£37.99
Subscription
Free Trial
Renews at £16.99p/m
Arrow left icon
Profile Icon Adam Boduch Profile Icon Christopher Pitt
Arrow right icon
£19.99 £28.99
Book Apr 2018 298 pages 1st Edition
eBook
£19.99 £28.99
Print
£37.99
Subscription
Free Trial
Renews at £16.99p/m
eBook
£19.99 £28.99
Print
£37.99
Subscription
Free Trial
Renews at £16.99p/m

What do you get with eBook?

Product feature icon Instant access to your Digital eBook purchase
Product feature icon Download this book in EPUB and PDF formats
Product feature icon Access this title in our online reader with advanced features
Product feature icon DRM FREE - Read whenever, wherever and however you want
Table of content icon View table of contents Preview book icon Preview Book

React 16 Tooling

Chapter 1. Creating a Personalized React Development Ecosystem

When people hear React, they think of a focused library used for efficiently rendering user interfaces. When people hear framework, they think of a large system that might have a few useful tools within it but is otherwise a bloated mess. They're correct about frameworks for the most part, but saying that React isn't a framework is a little misleading.

If you take React out of the box and try to do any meaningful development with it, you'll promptly hit a wall. This is because instead of being distributed as a monolithic framework, React is better described as a core library surrounded by an ecosystem of tools.

The advantage of a framework is that you can install the core library along with the supported tooling in one shot. The downside is that every project is different and you can't be sure what tools you need versus those that you won't. Another advantage to having an ecosystem of tools is that they can evolve independently from one another; you don't have to wait for a new release of the entire framework to get an enhancement for one of the tools that your project uses.

The aim of this book is to show you how to best utilize the tooling ecosystem surrounding React. In this chapter, you'll be introduced to the concept of React tooling by learning the following:

  • React without tooling
  • Introduction to tooling
  • The tools covered in this book
  • Deciding which tools are needed for your project

What's included with React


Before we dive into tooling discussions, let's make sure that we're on the same page about what React is, and what actually comes with the package when you install it. There are two core React packages required for running React web applications. We'll take a look at these now to provide you with some context for thinking about React tooling.

Components that compare render trees

The first part of the React core is the package called react. This package is what we interface with directly when writing React components. It's a small API—the only time we really use it is when we're creating components with state and we need to extend the Component class.

There's a lot going on under the hood with the react package. This is where the render tree resides and is responsible for efficiently rendering UI elements. Another name for the render tree is the virtual DOM. The idea is that you only have to write JSX markup that describe the UI elements that you want to render while the render tree takes care of everything else:

What you see in this diagram are the components that your code directly interfaces with, and the render tree that takes care of handling presentational changes that result from components that change state. The render tree and everything that it does for you is the key value proposition of React.

The DOM render target

The second part of the React core is the Document Object Model (DOM) itself. In fact, the name virtual DOM is rooted in the idea that React is creating DOM representations in JavaScript before it actually talks to the DOM APIs. However, the render tree is a better name because React is creating an AST (short for Abstract Syntax Tree) based on the React components and their states. This is why the same React library is able to work with projects like React Native.

The react-dom package is used to actually translate the render tree into DOM elements in the browser by directly communicating with the browser DOM APIs. Here's what the previous diagram looks like with react-dom included:

This is a nice architecture—it means that you can substitute react-dom for another render target with little effort. As you can see, the core layer of React is minimal. No wonder it's so popular—we can create user interfaces with declarative code that are easy to maintain and are efficient with little effort on our part. With this in mind, let's shift our focus over to the tooling that makes all of this possible.

Introducing tooling?


Tooling isn't unique to React. Every project has its own set of tools that handle tasks related to the core technology so that you don't have to. With frameworks, tooling is baked into the project for the most part. With libraries like React, you get to choose the tools you need versus those that don't play a role in your project.

Now that you know what the React core is, what makes up the rest of the React ecosystem?

Ancillary tasks outside of React

Framework bloat is a major turn-off for a lot of people. The reason it feels like bloat is because they have a lot of features that you'll likely never use. React handles this well because it has a clear distinction between the core library and anything else, including things that are essential for React development.

There are two observations I've made about React and the way it's positioned within its surrounding ecosystem:

  • It's easier to deploy apps that depend on a simple library instead of a framework where all batteries are included
  • It's easier to think about application development when you have tools that stay out of the way for the most part

In other words, you don't have to use the majority of React tools, but some of them are incredibly helpful.

Any given tool is external to the library you're working with; it's essential to remember this. Tools exist to automate something that would otherwise suck more development time out of our lives. Life is too short to manually do things that can be done for us. I repeat, life is too short for tasks that software can perform better than us. If you're a React developer, take comfort in the fact that there are tools out there for all of the important things that you need to do but don't have time to do.

A construction site analogy

Perhaps, the ultimate motivator for taking tooling seriously is thinking about what life would be like without the tools that we depend on as professionals. The construction industry is more mature than software and serves as a great example.

Imagine that you are part of a team that's responsible for building a house—an immensely complex undertaking with many moving parts. Now, think about everything that you have to work with. Let's start with the materials themselves. Anything that doesn't have to be assembled on site, isn't. When you're building a house, many components show up partially assembled. For example, sections of roof framing or mixed cement shows up when it's needed.

Then there are actual tools that builders use when putting the house together—simple screwdrivers, hammers, and measuring tapes are taken for granted. What would construction life be like without the ability to create components offsite or the availability of tools to work with everyday construction materials? Would it make the construction of a house impossible? No. Would the process of building it become some unbearably expensive and slow that it'd likely be cancelled before completed? Yes.

Unfortunately, in the software world, we're only beginning to understand how important tooling is. It doesn't matter that we have all the materials and knowledge to build the house of the future. If we don't have the right tooling, it might never be built.

React tooling covered in this book


There are literally hundreds of React tools in existence today. The aim of this book, however, is to cover the essential tools for React development. Even with the curated list of tools that you'll learn about in this book, you probably won't use every single one in any given project. Let's take a brief look at the tooling that we'll be looking at throughout the remainder of this book.

JSX needs to be compiled to JavaScript

React uses a special syntax that resembles HTML to declare components. This markup, called JSX, is embedded in the component JavaScript and needs to be compiled to JavaScript before it's usable by the browser.

The most common approach is to use Babel—a JavaScript compiler—along with a JSX plugin:

The trick is finding a way to make this compilation step as seamless as possible. As a developer, you shouldn't need to concern yourself with the JavaScript output produced by Babel.

Newer JavaScript language features need to be transpiled

Similar to compiling JSX to JavaScript, newer JavaScript language features need to be compiled into versions that are widely supported by browsers everywhere. In fact, once you figure out how to compile JSX to JavaScript, the same process is used to transpile between different versions of JavaScript:

You shouldn't have to worry about the transformed output of your JSX or JavaScript compilation. These are activities better suited for tools to handle, so that you can focus on application development.

Hot module loading to enable application development

Something that's unique to web application development is that it's mostly static content that's loaded into the browser. The browser loads the HTML, followed by any scripts which are then run to completion. There's a long-running process that continuously refreshes the page based on the state of the application—everything is over a network.

As you can imagine, this is especially annoying during development when you want the see the results of your code changes as they're introduced. You don't want to have to manually refresh the page every time you do something. This is where hot module replacement comes into play. Essentially, HMR is a tool that listens for code changes, and when it detects one, it sends a new version of the module to the browser:

Even with a tool like Webpack and its HMR component, it's time-consuming and error-prone to get this setup working correctly, even for simple React projects. Thankfully, there's tooling that hides these setup details from developers today.

Running unit tests automatically

You know that you need to write tests for your components. It's not that you don't want to write the actual tests; it's that setting them up so that they're able to run can be a pain. The Jest unit test tool simplifies this because it knows where tests can be found and can run them:

With Jest, we have a place where all of our unit tests go, and each depend on the component that they're testing. This tool knows where to find these tests and how to run them. The result is that we get nice unit test and code coverage output when we need it. There is no overhead beyond actually writing the tests.

Thinking about type safety

JavaScript isn't a type-safe language. Type safety can vastly improve the quality of applications by eliminating the possibility of runtime errors. Once again, we can use tooling to make type-safe React applications. The Flow tool can examine your code, look for type annotations, and notify you when errors are found.

Linting for code quality

It's one thing to have an application that works; it's another to have an application that works and has maintainable code that doesn't make people's eyes bleed. The best way to achieve measurable code quality is to adopt a standard, like Airbnb's (https://github.com/airbnb/javascript). The best way to enforce coding standards is to use a linter. With React applications, the preferred linting tool is ESLint (https://eslint.org/).

Isolating component development environments

Perhaps the most overlooked tool of React developers is Storybook, which is used for isolated component development. You don't realize it until you're developing your component, but the application can get in the way. Sometimes, you just want to see how the component looks and behaves all on its own:

With a tool like Storybook, it's trivial to provide an isolated context for your component, free of distractions from other components.

Providing a browser-based debugging environment

Sometimes, looking at unit test output and source code isn't enough to figure out a problem that you're experiencing. Instead, you need to see what's going on as you interact with the application itself. In the browser, you install React tooling that makes it easy to inspect React components as they are related to rendered HTML content.

React also has some built-in performance monitoring capabilities that extend the abilities of the browser developer tools. You can use them to examine and profile your components at a low level.

Deploying React applications

When you're ready to deploy your React application, it isn't as simple as producing a build and distributing it. In fact, you might not even distribute it at all if you're building a hosted service. Regardless of what the end use case of your application is, there are likely going to be several moving parts in addition to the React frontend. Increasingly, containerizing the main processes that make up your application stack is the preferred approach:

In order to create and deploy React application stacks like this, you'll rely on tools like Docker, especially when it comes time to automate the various deployment scenarios of your project.

Choosing the right tools


If the tooling in the preceding section seemed like a bit much for a single project, don't sweat it. Trying to leverage every possible React tool at the same time is always a mistake. Address one problem at a time, starting with the essentials. As your project moves forward, add in the optional tools to expand your toolset.

Essential tools

There are some React tools that you simply can't live without. For example, browsers don't understand JSX syntax, so this needs to be compiled to JavaScript. As you write code, you'll want to lint it to make sure that basic mistakes aren't missed, and you'll want to run your unit tests. If you try hard enough, you might be able to get by without these tools. But that's the thing—you would spend more effort not using a given tool than to simply embrace it.

As a starting point, find the minimal set of React tools that allow you to make progress. Once your progress noticeably slows, it's time to consider introducing additional tools.

Optional tools

Optional tools are things that you might not get any real value from. For example, you probably won't reap enormous benefits from using Flow to check for type safety or Storybook to isolate component development at the very beginning of a project.

The key thing to remember is that any React tool is optional, and no decisions are permanent. You can always bring in Flow later on, and you can always ditch Storybook if isolated component development isn't your thing.

Summary


This chapter introduced you to the concept of tooling in the React ecosystem. You learned that React, at its core, is a simple library and that it depends on the use of several tools to be of any value in the real world. Frameworks try to provide all of the tooling that you'll ever need for your project. While convenient, the needs of the framework users are difficult to predict and can be a distraction from core functionality.

Next, you learned that tooling in React can be a challenge because as a React developer, you're responsible for choosing the right tools and managing their configuration. You then got an overview of the tooling that you'll learn about in more detail throughout the remainder of this book. Lastly, you learned that some tools are critical for React development and you'll need to get them set up right away. Others are optional, and you might not start using them till there's an actual need later on in the life of the project.

In the next chapter, you'll use the Create React App tool to bootstrap a React project.

Left arrow icon Right arrow icon
Download code icon Download Code

Key benefits

  • • Each chapter presents meta-development solutions to help React developers
  • • The tools used are presented in a practical, solution-oriented approach with no fluff
  • • The chapters are arranged in a logical order that mirrors a typical React development workflow, but you are free to tweak the approaches discussed to fit your own unique style

Description

React 16 Tooling covers the most important tools, utilities, and libraries that every React developer needs to know — in detail. As React has grown, the amazing toolset around it has also grown, adding features and enhancing the development workflow. Each of these essential tools is presented in a practical manner and in a logical order mirroring the development workflow. These tools will make your development life simpler and happier, enabling you to create better and more performant apps. Adam starts with a hand-picked selection of the best tools for the React 16 ecosystem. For starters, there’s the create-react-app utility that’s officially supported by the React team. Not only does this tool bootstrap your React project for you, it also provides a consistent and stable framework to build upon. The premise is that when you don’t have to think about meta development work, more focus goes into the product itself. Other React tools follow this same approach to automating and improving your development life. Jest makes unit testing quicker. Flow makes catching errors easier. Docker containers make deployment in a stack simpler. Storybook makes developing components straightforward. ESLint makes writing standardized code faster. The React DevTools plugin makes debugging a cinch. React 16 Tooling clears away the barriers so you can focus on developing the good parts. In this book, we’ll look at each of these powerful tools in detail, showing you how to build the perfect React ecosystem to develop your apps within.

What you will learn

  • • Bootstrap a React application using create-react-app
  • • Isolate React component development using Storybook
  • • Write effective unit tests for your React components using Jest
  • • Ensure that your component code is to standard using ESLint
  • • Use browser extensions and built-in component instrumentation to debug React applications
  • • Enable type safety in React components with Flowtype
  • • Deploy React applications inside a Docker container as part of a larger application stack

Product Details

Country selected
Publication date, Length, Edition, Language, ISBN-13
Publication date : Apr 30, 2018
Length 298 pages
Edition : 1st Edition
Language : English
ISBN-13 : 9781788835015
Vendor :
Facebook

What do you get with eBook?

Product feature icon Instant access to your Digital eBook purchase
Product feature icon Download this book in EPUB and PDF formats
Product feature icon Access this title in our online reader with advanced features
Product feature icon DRM FREE - Read whenever, wherever and however you want

Product Details

Publication date : Apr 30, 2018
Length 298 pages
Edition : 1st Edition
Language : English
ISBN-13 : 9781788835015
Vendor :
Facebook

Packt Subscriptions

See our plans and pricing
Modal Close icon
£16.99 billed monthly
Feature tick icon Unlimited access to Packt's library of 7,000+ practical books and videos
Feature tick icon Constantly refreshed with 50+ new titles a month
Feature tick icon Exclusive Early access to books as they're written
Feature tick icon Solve problems while you work with advanced search and reference features
Feature tick icon Offline reading on the mobile app
Feature tick icon Simple pricing, no contract
£169.99 billed annually
Feature tick icon Unlimited access to Packt's library of 7,000+ practical books and videos
Feature tick icon Constantly refreshed with 50+ new titles a month
Feature tick icon Exclusive Early access to books as they're written
Feature tick icon Solve problems while you work with advanced search and reference features
Feature tick icon Offline reading on the mobile app
Feature tick icon Choose a DRM-free eBook or Video every month to keep
Feature tick icon PLUS own as many other DRM-free eBooks or Videos as you like for just £5 each
Feature tick icon Exclusive print discounts
£234.99 billed in 18 months
Feature tick icon Unlimited access to Packt's library of 7,000+ practical books and videos
Feature tick icon Constantly refreshed with 50+ new titles a month
Feature tick icon Exclusive Early access to books as they're written
Feature tick icon Solve problems while you work with advanced search and reference features
Feature tick icon Offline reading on the mobile app
Feature tick icon Choose a DRM-free eBook or Video every month to keep
Feature tick icon PLUS own as many other DRM-free eBooks or Videos as you like for just £5 each
Feature tick icon Exclusive print discounts

Frequently bought together

Stars icon
Total £ 60.96 87.97 27.01 saved
React Cookbook
£20.98 £29.99
Full-Stack React Projects
£19.99 £28.99
React 16 Tooling
£19.99 £28.99
=
Book stack Total £ 60.96 87.97 27.01 saved Stars icon

Table of Contents

18 Chapters
Title Page Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Copyright and Credits Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Packt Upsell Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Contributors Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Preface Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
1. Creating a Personalized React Development Ecosystem Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
2. Efficiently Bootstrapping React Applications with Create React App Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
3. Development Mode and Mastering Hot Reloading Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
4. Optimizing Test-Driven React Development Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
5. Streamlining Development and Refactoring with Type-Safe React Components Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
6. Enforcing Code Quality to Improve Maintainability Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
7. Isolating Components with Storybook Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
8. Debugging Components in the Browser Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
9. Instrumenting Application State with Redux Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
10. Building and Deploying Static React Sites with Gatsby Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
11. Building and Deploying React Applications with Docker Containers Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
1. Another Book You May Enjoy Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Index Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Get free access to Packt library with over 7500+ books and video courses for 7 days!
Start Free Trial

FAQs

How do I buy and download an eBook? Chevron down icon Chevron up icon

Where there is an eBook version of a title available, you can buy it from the book details for that title. Add either the standalone eBook or the eBook and print book bundle to your shopping cart. Your eBook will show in your cart as a product on its own. After completing checkout and payment in the normal way, you will receive your receipt on the screen containing a link to a personalised PDF download file. This link will remain active for 30 days. You can download backup copies of the file by logging in to your account at any time.

If you already have Adobe reader installed, then clicking on the link will download and open the PDF file directly. If you don't, then save the PDF file on your machine and download the Reader to view it.

Please Note: Packt eBooks are non-returnable and non-refundable.

Packt eBook and Licensing When you buy an eBook from Packt Publishing, completing your purchase means you accept the terms of our licence agreement. Please read the full text of the agreement. In it we have tried to balance the need for the ebook to be usable for you the reader with our needs to protect the rights of us as Publishers and of our authors. In summary, the agreement says:

  • You may make copies of your eBook for your own use onto any machine
  • You may not pass copies of the eBook on to anyone else
How can I make a purchase on your website? Chevron down icon Chevron up icon

If you want to purchase a video course, eBook or Bundle (Print+eBook) please follow below steps:

  1. Register on our website using your email address and the password.
  2. Search for the title by name or ISBN using the search option.
  3. Select the title you want to purchase.
  4. Choose the format you wish to purchase the title in; if you order the Print Book, you get a free eBook copy of the same title. 
  5. Proceed with the checkout process (payment to be made using Credit Card, Debit Cart, or PayPal)
Where can I access support around an eBook? Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
  • If you experience a problem with using or installing Adobe Reader, the contact Adobe directly.
  • To view the errata for the book, see www.packtpub.com/support and view the pages for the title you have.
  • To view your account details or to download a new copy of the book go to www.packtpub.com/account
  • To contact us directly if a problem is not resolved, use www.packtpub.com/contact-us
What eBook formats do Packt support? Chevron down icon Chevron up icon

Our eBooks are currently available in a variety of formats such as PDF and ePubs. In the future, this may well change with trends and development in technology, but please note that our PDFs are not Adobe eBook Reader format, which has greater restrictions on security.

You will need to use Adobe Reader v9 or later in order to read Packt's PDF eBooks.

What are the benefits of eBooks? Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
  • You can get the information you need immediately
  • You can easily take them with you on a laptop
  • You can download them an unlimited number of times
  • You can print them out
  • They are copy-paste enabled
  • They are searchable
  • There is no password protection
  • They are lower price than print
  • They save resources and space
What is an eBook? Chevron down icon Chevron up icon

Packt eBooks are a complete electronic version of the print edition, available in PDF and ePub formats. Every piece of content down to the page numbering is the same. Because we save the costs of printing and shipping the book to you, we are able to offer eBooks at a lower cost than print editions.

When you have purchased an eBook, simply login to your account and click on the link in Your Download Area. We recommend you saving the file to your hard drive before opening it.

For optimal viewing of our eBooks, we recommend you download and install the free Adobe Reader version 9.