React App Generator

This is a generator based on my own experiences with React.

The application is structured as:

.eslintrc.json
.babelrc
LICENSE
gulpfile.js
package.json
webpack.config.js

src/
    index.html
    js/
        index.jsx           # Entry point
        store.js            # Redux store setup
        defaultState.js     # The default Redux state
        actions/            # Actions for the application
            ActionBase.js   # Base action class
            index.js        # Bootstraps action classes for dispatch
            manifest.json   # Lists classes bootstrapped by index.js
        components/         # React UI components
            App.jsx         # The root component of the application

spec/   # Unit tests

dist/   # Compilation (gulp/webpack) output

Action Architecture

Actions are created as subclasses of ActionBase. All actions are listed in the src/js/actions/manifest.json file. This file is automatically updated when you use the oh-react:action generator. If you manually create action classes you will need to list them in this file. During compilation this JSON file is compiled to a Javascript file loaded by src/js/actions/index.js.

The action index loads all action classes, creates an instance of each and bootstraps actions and actionHandlers as exports. You should use actions to dispatch actions against the store. actionHandlers is bound to the Redux store in src/js/store.js.

Creating Actions

yo oh-react:action Foo.Bar.DoSomething

Afterwards your action class will be in src/js/actions/Foo/Bar/DoSomethingAction.js with a spec in spec/actions/Foo/Bar/DoSomethingActionSpec.js.

You should implement the DoSomethingAction#create method to create a Redux action object. You can then do the following to dispatch the action from anywhere in your code:

import { actions } from "./actions"; // Relative path to actions/
// Invokes DoSomethingAction#create(<arguments>) and dispatches it on the
// bound Redux store.
actions.foo.bar.doSomething(<arguments>);

To handle the action, implement the DoSomethingAction#handle method. This will receive the state the action is bound to (which may be the full state or a part of it) and the action object as arguments. You should return a new state to replace the old.

Example:

import ActionBase from "./ActionBase";

export default class DoSomethingAction extends ActionBase {
    constructor() {
        super();

        // This is the type of the action as defined by Redux. You should
        // set `{ type: this.actionType }` in your #create()
        // implementation.
        this.actionType = "do-something";

        // Used as the action function name
        // (i.e., actions.foo.bar.doSomething()`).
        this.actionKey = "foo.bar.doSomething";

        // Specifies the path in the state object that this action changes.
        // When DoSomethingAction#handle(state, action) is called this key
        // is used to determine what state is passed as `state`.
        this.stateKey = "foo.bar.doSomething";
    }

    /**
     * This only gets called if action.type == this.actionType.
     */
    handle(state, action) {
        return { /* New State */ };
    }

    /**
     * Create your action object that will be dispatched on the store.
     */
    create(args) {
        return { type: this.actionType, ...args };
    }
}

Creating Components

A generator will be added to generate components. However you should simply create a new React ES6-style class in js/components/.

TODO

• Further documentation
• Component generator
• Support multiple action types per action
  • Page (route) generation