react-app-rewire-build-dev

Source code files used by webpack-dev-server is rendered in watch mode at user specified directory without ejecting create-react-app.

Why do I need this?

As of now (21/06/2018), create-react-app (more precisely react-scripts) does not allow development builds to be written to the disk because it uses webpackDevServer to serve your build files and folders (for good reasons). The problem is that in some cases you need to have these files written to the disk i.e:

• Developing browser extensions using React.
• Incorporating your React application into an existing application.
• Serving your React app with a dedicated backend.

Installation

yarn add --dev react-app-rewire-build-dev

or

npm install --save-dev  react-app-rewire-build-dev

Usage

In the config-overrides.js (refer : react-app-rewired) you created for react-app-rewire-build-dev add this code:

const reactAppRewireBuildDev = require('react-app-rewire-build-dev');

/* config-overrides.js */

const options = {
  outputPath : "<location of watch directory i.e. '../server/build' >",  /***** required *****/
  basename : "<location of subdirectory>" // deploy react-app in a subdirectory /***** optional *****/
  hotReloadPort : "<port of webpack-server>" // default:3000,simply relaod the webpage on changes./***** optional *****/
}

module.exports = function override(config, env) {
  return reactAppRewireBuildDev(config, env, options);
}

Inspirations

write-file-webpack-plugin by @gajus