Skip to main content

Getting Started

Web applications require a lot of boilerplate. It's also hard to know how to get started without examples. We offer both server side rendered (SSR) and client side rendered (CSR) solutions that can be bootstrapped and tailored to your current project with just one command.

Oh, and they come complete with Infrastructure As Code so you can deploy on your cloud of choice.

Brilliant.

Bootstrap your framework

Packages for templating SSR Node.js with React apps with little build configuration. The best way to get started, is bootstrap the framework using the scaffolding-cli from Amido Stacks. By using it in the interactive mode, you can simply answer few questions to get a bespoke framework, ready to go with an example test.

Run to start configuring your solution
npx @amidostacks/scaffolding-cli run -i

Get developing in just a few questions

Environment Variables

Before you can start developing you'll need to replace your environment variables with the appropriate values. These values will be automatically picked up and used by the underlying server and web client.

export NODE_ENV=development
export PORT=3000
export NODE_ENV: process.env.NODE_ENV || "development"
export PUBLIC_URL: publicUrl
export APP_BASE_PATH: ## Stacks base path
export MENU_API_URL: ## Used by the internal API fetcher
Instrumentation Key
export APPINSIGHTS_INSTRUMENTATIONKEY:<Instrumentation Key here>

Get developing

CSR webapp is bootstrapped from Create-React-App

Implementation details

The template is a Client Side Rendered (CSR) implementation using:

At the end of bootstrapping your example framework you'll have an output that will contain all the:

  • dependencies
  • scripts
  • example tests
  • pipelines
  • information needed to start testing

Development

If you like to view the github repository , the source code can be found here

Move to the <PROJECT-NAME>/src folder and run the next commands

npm install
npm run dev

This offers live reload of client side code and server side code if you're using ssr.

npm start

Runs the app in the development mode.
Open http://localhost:3001 to view it in the browser.

note

For local development, you will need to start the server to host the webapp under dev.

Note: To avoid running the CSR in localhost CORS issues we can run the SSR app in the background and use MENU_API_URL env point to http://localhost:3000

The page will reload if you make edits.
You will also see any lint errors in the console.

npm run test

Launches the test runner in the interactive watch mode.
See the section about running tests for more information.

Production

Move to the <PROJECT-NAME>/src folder and run the next commands

npm install
npm run build

Builds the app for production to the dist folder.
It correctly bundles React in production mode and optimizes the build for the best performance.

The build is minified and the filenames include the hashes.
Your app is ready to be deployed!

npm run start

This will start the app in production mode so you can see how it will behave when deployed.

Making a Progressive Web App

This section has moved here: https://facebook.github.io/create-react-app/docs/making-a-progressive-web-app

Advanced Configuration

This section has moved here: https://facebook.github.io/create-react-app/docs/advanced-configuration

Cypress: Functional Testing

Compile and watch for code changes:

npm run test:cypress:watch

Run locally in Cypress Test Runner:

npm run test:cypress:open

Environment variables

We need to ensure that Cypress knows the following at a minimum:

  • protocol (e.g. http)
  • host (e.g. google.com)
  • path (e.g. /images)

All variables should be pulled in using the same method the app does. In this case, this is all done in cypress/plugins/index.config.js

Scripts

For all Cypress oriented scripts, see the below file in the CSR source code test:cypress - ./package.json

Customising

Since the frameworks provide real examples on deployed applications, we recommend using these as examples and then replacing them with your own applications under test.

Feedback

Your feedback and contributions will help us to improve. See the Stacks guide to new contributions for more information.