React boilerplate

While React is relatively easy to setup, especially due to react-router-assembly, quite a bit of processing needs to be done before files run, in this case by Gulp.

Configuration file example is located at /configuration.example.js. Adjust it to the server configuration and place in a safe place, where it won't be deleted between deployments. The path to this module needs to be provided in the environment variable called CONFIGURATION_FILE_PATH.

Constituents

What React boilerplate does:

• compile SASS
• convert ES6 JavaScript including JSX to ES5
• merge image sprites into a single file to reduce the number of file downloads
• compress JavaScript on the front-end
• use react-router-assembly to simplify server and client side rendering for SEO and website opitimisations for users
• restart the server when developing but also allows the /deploy directory to be self-contained and ready for using in production

Installation

1. Get an archive of the latest version of React Boilerplate at GitHub and extract it to a separate directory.
2. Run npm run setup.
3. For extra compression, change the environment variable NODE_ENV to production before deploying (by running export NODE_ENV=production.

Caviat of watcher used: //assume that if scripts don't require something that was removed, //only a refresh is needed without new Browserify bundling

Note: Gulp won't be reloaded when gulpfile.js changes.

this project has been tested on OSX only