React, Redux, React-Bootstrap, ES7, Webpack, Ruby on Rails Demo
- Server-Side Rendering of React via the react_on_rails gem
- Live at www.reactrails.com
Control Plane Deployment Example
Control Plane offers a viable, cost-saving alternative to Heroku, especially when using the cpl gem to deploy to Control Plane.
ShakaCode recently migrated HiChee.com to Control Plane, resulting in a two-thirds reduction in server hosting costs!
See doc in ./.controlplane/readme.md for how to easily deploy this app to Control Plane.
The instructions leverage the cpl
CLI, with source code and many more tips on how to migrate from Heroku to Control Plane
in https://github.com/shakacode/heroku-to-control-plane.
React on Rails Pro and ShakaCode Pro Support
React on Rails Pro provides Node server rendering and other performance enhancements for React on Rails.
- HVMN Testimonial, Written by Paul Benigeri, October 12, 2018
- HVMN’s 90% Reduction in Server Response Time from React on Rails Pro
- Egghead React on Rails Pro Deployment Highlights
For more information, see the React on Rails Pro Docs.
- Optimizing your front end setup with Webpack v5+ and Shakapacker for React on Rails including code splitting with loadable-components.
- Upgrading your app to use the current Webpack setup that skips the Sprockets asset pipeline.
- Better performance client and server side.
ShakaCode can also help you with your custom software development needs. We specialize in marketplace and e-commerce applications that utilize both Rails and React. We can even leverage our code for HiChee.com for your app!
See the ShakaCode Client Engagement Model article to learn how we can work together.
Community
- forum.shakacode.com: Post your questions
- @railsonmaui on Twitter
- For a live, example of the code in this repo, see www.reactrails.com.
Testimonials
From Joel Hooks, Co-Founder, Chief Nerd at egghead.io, January 30, 2017:
For more testimonials, see Live Projects and Kudos.
Videos
React On Rails Tutorial Series
NEWS
- 2022-01-11: Added example of deployment to the ControlPlane.
- We made a react-native client: shakacode/reactrails-react-native-client. If you want to hack on this with us, email [email protected].
react-native client for this project!
Check out ourThis is a simple example application that illustrates the use of ReactJs to implement a commenting system. Front-end code leverages both ReactJs and Rails asset pipeline while the backend is 100% Rails. It shows off a little bit of the interactivity of a ReactJs application, allowing the commmenter to choose the form layout. react-bootstrap
is used for the React components. A pure Rails UI generated from scaffolding is shown for comparison.
You can see this tutorial live here: http://reactrails.com/
Table of Contents
- Demoed Functionality
- Basic Demo Setup
- Javascript Development without Rails
- Rails Integration
- Webpack
- Sass, CSS Modules, and Twitter Bootstrap integration
- Process Management during Development
- Rendering with Express Server
- Contributors
- Open Code of Conduct
Demoed Functionality
- Example of using the react_on_rails gem for easy react/webpack integration with Rails.
- Example of React with CSS Modules inside of Rails using Webpack as described in Smarter CSS builds with Webpack.
- Example of enabling hot reloading of both JS and CSS (modules) from your Rails app in development mode. Change your code. Save. Browser updates without a refresh!
- Example of React/Redux with Rails Action Cable.
- Example of Rails 7 with ReactJs/Redux/React-Router with Webpack and ES7.
- Enabling development of a JS client independently from Rails using the Webpack Dev Server. You can see this by starting the app and visiting http://localhost:4000
- Enabling the use of npm modules and Babel with a Rails application using Webpack.
- Easily enable retrofitting such a JS framework into an existing Rails app. You don't need a brand new single page app!
- Example setting up Ruby and JavaScript linting in a real project, with corresponding CI rake tasks.
- Enabling the i18n functionality with react-intl.
Technologies involved
See package.json and Gemfile for versions
- react_on_rails gem
- React
- react-bootstrap
- bootstrap-loader
- Redux
- react-router
- react-router-redux
- Webpack with hot-reload (for local dev)
- Babel transpiler
- Ruby on Rails 7 for backend app and comparison with plain HTML
- Heroku for Rails 7 deployment
- Deployment to the ControlPlane
- Turbolinks 5
Basic Demo Setup
Prerequisites
- Node
v18.13.0
or above. Be sure that you have Node installed! We suggest using nvm and runningnvm list
to check the active Node version. See this article Updating and using nvm. - Ruby 3.1.2 or above
- Postgres v9.2 or above
- Redis. Check that you have Redis installed by running
which redis-server
. If missing and on MacOS, install with Homebrew (brew install redis
) - Yarn.
Setup
git clone [email protected]:shakacode/react-webpack-rails-tutorial.git
cd react-webpack-rails-tutorial
bundle install
yarn
rake db:setup
rails start
- Open a browser tab to http://localhost:3000 for the Rails app example
Basic Command Line
- Run all linters and tests:
rake
- See all npm commands:
yarn run
- To start all development processes:
foreman start -f Procfile.dev
- To start only all Rails development processes:
foreman start -f Procfile.hot
Rails Integration
We're now using Webpack for all Sass and JavaScript assets so we can do CSS Modules within Rails!
- Production Deployment: heroku-deployment.md.
- Configure Buildpacks
heroku buildpacks:set heroku/ruby --app your-app heroku buildpacks:add --index 1 heroku/nodejs --app your-app heroku buildpacks:set --index 3 https://github.com/sreid/heroku-buildpack-sourceversion.git --app your-app
- Configure Buildpacks
Testing
-
See Yak Shaving Failing Integration Tests with React and Rails
-
Be sure to see Integration Test Notes for advice on running your integration tests.
-
Testing Mode: When running tests, it is useful to run
foreman start -f Procfile.spec
in order to have webpack automatically recompile the static bundles. Rspec is configured to automatically check whether or not this process is running. If it is not, it will automatically rebuild the webpack bundle to ensure you are not running tests on stale client code. This is achieved via theReactOnRails::TestHelper.configure_rspec_to_compile_assets(config)
line in therails_helper.rb
file. If you are using this project as an example and are not using RSpec, you may want to implement similar logic in your own project.
Webpack
Converted to use @rails/webpacker webpack configuration.
Additional Resources
- Webpack Docs
- Webpack Cookbook
- Good overview: Pete Hunt's Webpack Howto
Sass, CSS Modules, and Twitter Bootstrap Integration
We're using Webpack to handle Sass assets so that we can use CSS modules. The best way to understand how we're handling assets is to close follow this example. We'll be working on more docs soon. If you'd like to give us a hand, that's a great way to learn about this!
For example in client/app/bundles/comments/components/CommentBox/CommentBox.jsx, see how we use standard JavaScript import syntax to refer to class names that come from CSS modules:
import css from './CommentBox.module.scss';
export default class CommentBox extends React.Component {
render() {
const { actions, data } = this.props;
const cssTransitionGroupClassNames = {
enter: css.elementEnter,
enterActive: css.elementEnterActive,
leave: css.elementLeave,
leaveActive: css.elementLeaveActive,
};
}
}
Fonts with SASS
The tutorial makes use of a custom font OpenSans-Light. We're doing this to show how to add assets for the CSS processing. The font files are located under client/app/assets/fonts and are loaded by both the Rails asset pipeline and the Webpack HMR server.
Process management during development
bundle exec foreman start -f <Procfile>
Procfile.dev
: Starts the Webpack Dev Server and Rails with Hot Reloading.Procfile.static
: Starts the Rails server and generates static assets that are used for tests.
Contributors
The Shaka Code team!, led by Justin Gordon, along with with many others. See contributors.md
RubyMine and WebStorm
Special thanks to JetBrains for their great tools: RubyMine and WebStorm. Some developers of this project use RubyMine at the top level, mostly for Ruby work, and we use WebStorm opened up to the client
directory to focus on JSX and Sass files.
Hiring
We're looking for great developers that want to work with Rails + React (and react-native!) with a remote-first, distributed, worldwide team, for our own products, client work, and open source. More info here.
ShakaCode
Thank you from Justin Gordon andThank you for considering using React on Rails.
Aloha and best wishes from the ShakaCode team!