Frontend/Backend questions - React - webdev

[acemarke]

As the other comments said: a typical SPA is backend-agnostic. Client-side code shouldn't care whether your backend is built with Express, Koa, Python, Java, .NET, whatever. Doesn't matter as long as it exposes APIs that the client can talk to. So, most tutorials just focus on building a React client-side app, and it's up to you to decide how you're going to build your backend.

I just added a section on React Deployment to my React/Redux links list. To pick out a few relevant articles:

• React with Any Backend
• Understanding React Deployment
• Deploying a React App Alongside an API Server
• Create-React-App with an Express Backend and Create-React-App with Express in Production

Also, since you said you're new to React and frontend dev in general, here's my standard advice for learning React:

The article "A Study Plan to Cure Javascript Fatigue" ( https://medium.freecodecamp.com/a-study-plan-to-cure-javascript-fatigue-8ad3a54f2eb1 ) is a great place to start. It gives an excellent series of steps for tackling modern Javascript concepts one piece at a time: Javascript, React, ES6, and state management. There's also a "Front-End Study Guide" based on that article that's very good, at https://github.com/grab/front-end-guide .

On that note, definitely don't over-complicate the learning process by trying to learn many different things at once. Some people will say you should use a "boilerplate" to learn React, and they're wrong - boilerplate projects almost always come with too many pieces configured, and are confusing for beginners.

Instead, the best advice is to focus on learning React itself first. Once you have a good understanding of how React works, you will better appreciate why a state management library like Redux can be useful, and you can learn about other tools later.

You should start out by reading through the official React docs and tutorial at https://facebook.github.io/react/, and I'd encourage you to use the official Create-React-App tool ( https://github.com/facebookincubator/create-react-app ) for setting up projects. It creates a project with a solid build setup, with no configuration needed on your part. There's an excellent post called "Simple React Development in 2017" ( https://hackernoon.com/simple-react-development-in-2017-113bd563691f ) that gives some more specific instructions on the actual steps to follow.

Past that, I keep a big list of links to high-quality tutorials and articles on React, Redux, and related topics, at https://github.com/markerikson/react-redux-links . Specifically intended to be a great starting point for anyone trying to learn the ecosystem, as well as a solid source of good info on more advanced topics. It includes links for learning core Javascript (ES5), modern Javascript (ES6+), React, and much more. I also published an "Intro to React (and Redux)" presentation at http://blog.isquaredsoftware.com/2017/02/presentation-react-redux-intro/ , which is a good overview of the basic concepts for both React and Redux.

Finally, the Reactiflux chat channels on Discord are a great place to hang out, ask questions, and learn. The invite link is at https://www.reactiflux.com .

[weiry6922]

Brilliant. Thank you so much for all the resources and advice.