Overview:

The Universal React Redux Boilerplate is a boilerplate that provides a starting point for building React/Redux applications. It comes with various features and configurations to streamline the development process and make it more enjoyable. The main goal of this boilerplate is to showcase the best practices and features from the React ecosystem, while also providing a production-ready setup.

Features:

• Server-side rendering with Express: Allows for faster initial page loads and improved SEO.
• Code splitting with dynamic imports and react-loadable: Optimizes the application’s performance by splitting the code into smaller chunks that are loaded only when needed.
• Sane webpack configurations: Provides pre-configured webpack configurations that work well with the React ecosystem.
• JS hot reloading with react-hot-loader: Enables hot reloading of JavaScript code during development, eliminating the need for manual page reloads.
• CSS, SASS, and css-modules support with hot reloading: Supports CSS, SASS, and css-modules with hot reloading to provide a smooth development experience.
• Routing with react-router-v4: Includes react-router-v4 for handling client-side routing in the application.
• Full production builds: Generates optimized production builds that don’t rely on babel-node.
• Pre-configured testing tools with jest and enzyme: Comes with pre-configured jest and enzyme testing tools to facilitate testing of components, including css modules, static files, and aliased module paths.

Installation:

To install and use the Universal React Redux Boilerplate, follow these steps:

1. Copy environment variables and edit them if necessary.

cp .env.example .env

2. Install dependencies.

npm install

3. Start the development server.

npm start

4. Open your browser and navigate to http://localhost:3000 to view the application.

For production builds, you can add the necessary environment variables in the way you would normally do on your production system. Alternatively, if using Heroku, you can simply add a Procfile in the root directory, and the postinstall script will handle the rest.

Path Aliases can be defined in the package.json file using the _moduleAliases property. Aliases are used to define require() aliases for both webpack and node. Aliased paths are prefixed with @ for component and template paths, and $ for server paths built by babel.

Additional aliases can be added in package.json as per your requirement.

In development mode, environment variables are loaded from the .env file in the root directory using dotenv. For production, you’ll need to manage the environment variables yourself.

The project uses CSS Modules for styling. Class names should be in camelCase. To use CSS Modules, simply import the .scss file into your component.

The project also supports the Redux Devtools Extension, which can be installed as a Chrome or Firefox extension.

Summary:

The Universal React Redux Boilerplate is a comprehensive starting point for building React/Redux applications. It provides a set of pre-configured features and best practices from the React ecosystem, making the development process more streamlined and enjoyable. With features like server-side rendering, code splitting, hot reloading, routing, testing tools, and support for CSS Modules, the boilerplate offers a solid foundation for building production-ready applications. The installation process is straightforward, and the boilerplate can be easily customized to suit specific project requirements.