ReactJS plus Spring Project Scaffold

The Project

This post is about setting up a web application project with ReactJS frontend and Spring boot backend. The project will compile as a single fat jar which will include both frontend and backend components. Maven will handle both UI and API builds. Choose a name for the project reactjs-spring-template, write a little readme in the project directory and create a folder for the project, then follow up.

Finished code is here

ReactJS Scaffold

• Make sure you have latest version of node installed, I suggest using nvm to manage multiple version

# default -> v14.16.1
nvm list

• Create webapp for the project

cd project
npx create-react-app webapp --template redux

Clean up Code

• src/app.js: Remove all HTML and add an empty div <div>It Works!</div>
• App.css: Remove everything but keep the file for custom CSS
• app/store.js: remove counter feature references
• features\counter: You can delete this folder but it’s better to keep it for reference

Update Branding

• public\index.html: Update title and description tags
• public: remove existing favicon and logo files, you don’t have to replace them right away
• public\manifest.json: update short_name and name

Setup test

update App.test.js

expect(getByText(/works/i)).toBeInTheDocument();

run npm test make sure everything passes. You might receive an error saying that the reducer is invalid but that’s ok.

Install Bootstrap

# https://react-bootstrap.github.io/getting-started/introduction
npm install react-bootstrap [email protected] --save

add import 'bootstrap/dist/css/bootstrap.min.css'; in App.js

Add routing

npm install react-router-dom --save

Add the following code instead of <div>It Works!</div> and import relevant references from react-bootstrap and react-router.

    <Router>
      <Navbar bg="light" expand="lg">
        <Navbar.Brand href="#home">Title.</Navbar.Brand>
        <Navbar.Toggle aria-controls="basic-navbar-nav" />
        <Navbar.Collapse id="basic-navbar-nav">
          <Nav className="mr-auto">
            <Nav.Link><Link to="/">Home</Link></Nav.Link>
            <Nav.Link><Link to="/about">About</Link></Nav.Link>
          </Nav>
        </Navbar.Collapse>
      </Navbar>
        <Switch>
          <Route path="/about">
            <div>About</div>
          </Route>
          <Route path="/">
            <div>Home</div>
          </Route>
        </Switch>
    </Router>

Spring Boot Scaffold

• Make sure java version is 11+

java -version

• Go to https://start.spring.io/. Use the preselected versions and project setting (Maven, Spring 2.5.3, Java 11) and fill up the required fields.
• give your project a name api
• add Spring Data JPA and Spring Web Dependency
• Export the scaffold and copy the folder in project directory

Project Directory

At this point your project directory should look like this.

├── README.md
└── project
    ├── api
    └── webapp

Since this whole project will be built using maven, it’s time to move some files and make sure that pom files are managing all aspects of build and publishing.

• go to api directory
• move .mvn, mvnw, mvnw.cmd and pom.xml from api directory to the project root
• Create pom.xml in webapp and api folder

We have three pom.xml files now and we will edit them one-by-one. The project directory should now be looking like this.

.
├── README.md
└── project
    ├── api
    │   ├── HELP.md
    │   ├── pom.xml
    │   └── src
    ├── mvnw
    ├── mvnw.cmd
    ├── pom.xml
    └── webapp
        ├── README.md
        ├── node_modules
        ├── package-lock.json
        ├── package.json
        ├── pom.xml
        ├── public
        └── src

Project pom.xml

• Remove build, dependencies and properties section
• Add the module section that points to webapp and api projects.
• make sure packaging is pom : <packaging>pom</packaging>
• Artifact Id is project name

Final pom.xml

WebApp pom.xml

• This is going to be blank at the start.
• <parent> tag will refer to the project pom
• We will be using https://github.com/eirslett/frontend-maven-plugin to compile the ReactJS project.

Final pom.xml

API pom.xml

• <parent> tag will refer to the project pom
• Most of the component will remain the same from the initial version
• Use maven-resources-plugin to copy ReactJS build files

<plugin>
    <artifactId>maven-resources-plugin</artifactId>
    <executions>
        <execution>
        <id>copy ReactJS frontend content</id>
        <phase>generate-resources</phase>
        <goals>
            <goal>copy-resources</goal>
        </goals>
        <configuration>
            <outputDirectory>src/main/resources/public</outputDirectory>
            <overwrite>true</overwrite>
            <resources>
            <resource>
                <directory>${project.parent.basedir}/webapp/build</directory>
                <includes>
                <include>static/</include>
                <include>index.html</include>
                <include>asset-manifest.json</include>
                <include>manifest.json</include>
                <include>robots.txt</include>
                </includes>
            </resource>
            </resources>
        </configuration>
        </execution>
    </executions>
    </plugin>

• H2 will be used for DB

Final pom.xml

Compile and Run

• mvn clean install
• java -jar api/target/api-0.0.1-SNAPSHOT.jar

This will display the ReactJS generated web app at the root url http://localhost:8080.

API

This was just the build and integration stuff. To make a real application I’ll create an API endpoint and add some dummy data to it then I’ll use ReactJS frontend to call that API to fetch and display that data.

Since the jar build is for production and deploy everything from the same domain the API calls don’t need any special handling.

Dev Setup

But for development with fast reload and everything it is ideal to run the frontend and backend build separately. To do that add proxy configuration in package.json

{
  "proxy": "http://localhost:8080"
}

And run backend and frontend separately.

cd api
mvn clean install
java -jar target/api-0.0.1-SNAPSHOT.jar

cd webapp
npm run serve