Full Stack JavaScript Strategies

Chapter 14. Building the React App

Now that you’ve done your research and know the tools you’re going to use, it’s time to initialize your frontend project! You’ll set up the React app and all the tooling you need to build your frontend.

By now, you’ve reviewed the designs multiple times, had discussions with the Product team and your dev team, and talked to the DevOps team about getting the infrastructure for the frontend ready. You have a few diagrams and documents to guide you and the team through building all the components. You also have plenty of tickets to split up among the team. When you’re starting a greenfield project, though, you’ll be looked to as the person who will initialize the repo and make the structure of the project. That way, your team can start working on different parts of the app, and everyone has confidence that development can proceed without issues.

In this chapter, I’ll go over:

• Setting up the React app with some of the packages

• Building the first feature

• Writing the first test

You don’t need to have everything in place, just enough for the team to start work. You may be tasked with background development while the rest of the team does feature work. This is one way you act as a multiplier for the team: by working on conventions, docs, and implementing tools that help others get up to speed and get through their tasks more smoothly.

Set Up the Initial React App

First, initialize Git in a new repo or connect it to a remote repo so that you ...