faq.md

Frequently Asked Questions

Table of Contents

• Where are Babel and ESLint configured?
• Where are the files coming from when I run npm start?
• How do I fix Error: listen EADDRINUSE 127.0.0.1:3000?
  • OS X / Linux
  • Windows
• Issue with local caching when running in production mode (F5 / ctrl+F5 / cmd+r weird behavior)
  • Quick fix on your local browser:
  • Full in-depth explanation
• Local webfonts not working for development
• Non-route containers
  • Where do I put the reducer?
  • How do I run the saga?
• Use CI with bitbucket pipelines
• I'm using Node v0.12 and the server doesn't work?
• How to keep my project up-to-date with react-boilerplate?
• How to turn off Webpack performance warnings after production build?
• Styles getting overridden?
• Have another question?

Where are Babel and ESLint configured?

In package.json

Where are the files coming from when I run npm start?

In development Webpack compiles your application runs it in-memory. Only when you run npm run build will it write to disk and preserve your bundled application across computer restarts.

How do I fix Error: listen EADDRINUSE 127.0.0.1:3000?

This simply means that there's another process already listening on port 3000. The fix is to kill the process and rerun npm start.

OS X / Linux:

1. Find the process id (PID):

   ps aux | grep node

   This will return the PID as the value following your username:

   janedoe    29811  49.1  2.1  3394936 356956 s004  S+    4:45pm   2:40.07 node server

   Note: If nothing is listed, you can try lsof -i tcp:3000

2. Then run

   kill -9 YOUR_PID

   e.g. given the output from the example above, YOUR_PID is 29811, hence that would mean you would run kill -9 29811

Windows

1. Find the process id (PID):

   netstat -a -o -n

   This will return a list of running processes and the ports they're listening on:

   Proto     Local Address     Foreign Address   State       PID
   TCP       0.0.0.0:25        0.0.0.0:0         Listening   4196
   ...
   TCP       0.0.0.0:3000      0.0.0.0:0         Listening   28344
   

2. Then run

   taskkill /F /PID YOUR_PID

   e.g. given the output from the example above, YOUR_PID is 28344, hence that would mean you would run taskkill /F /PID 28344

Issue with local caching when running in production mode (F5 / ctrl+F5 / cmd+r weird behavior)

Your production site isn't working? You update the code and nothing changes? It drives you insane?

Quick fix on your local browser:

To fix it on your local browser, just do the following. (Suited when you're testing the production mode locally)

Chrome dev tools > Application > Clear Storage > Clear site data (Chrome)

Full in-depth explanation

Read more at https://github.com/NekR/offline-plugin/blob/master/docs/updates.md

Local webfonts not working for development

In development mode CSS sourcemaps require that styling is loaded by blob://, resulting in browsers resolving font files relative to the main document.

A way to use local webfonts in development mode is to add an absolute output.publicPath in webpack.dev.babel.js, with protocol.

// webpack.dev.babel.js

output: {
  publicPath: 'http://127.0.0.1:3000/',
  /* … */
},

Non-route containers

Note: Container will always be nested somewhere below a route. Even if there's dozens of components in between, somewhere up the tree will be route. (maybe only "/", but still a route)

Where do I put the reducer?

While you can include the reducer statically in reducers.js, we don't recommend this as you lose the benefits of code splitting. Instead, add it as a composed reducer. This means that you pass actions onward to a second reducer from a lower-level route reducer like so:

// Main route reducer

function myReducerOfRoute(state, action) {
  switch (action.type) {
    case SOME_OTHER_ACTION:
      return someOtherReducer(state, action);
  }
}

That way, you still get the code splitting at route level, but avoid having a static combineReducers call that includes all of them by default.

See this and the following lesson of the egghead.io Redux course for more information about reducer composition!

Use CI with bitbucket pipelines

Your project is on bitbucket? Take advantage of the pipelines feature (Continuous Integration) by creating a 'bitbucket-pipelines.yml' file at the root of the project and use the following code to automatically test your app at each commit:

image: gwhansscheuren/bitbucket-pipelines-node-chrome-firefox

pipelines:
  default:
    - step:
        script:
          - node --version
          - npm --version
          - npm install
          - npm test

I'm using Node v0.12 and the server doesn't work?

We settled on supporting the last three major Node.js versions for the boilerplate – at the moment of this writing those are v5, v6 and v7. We highly recommend upgrading to a newer Node.js version!

If you have to use Node.js 0.12, you can hack around the server not running by using babel-cli to run the server: npm install babel-cli, and then replace all instances of node server in the "scripts" in the package.json with babel server!

How to keep my project up-to-date with react-boilerplate?

While it's possible to keep your project up-to-date or "in sync" with react-boilerplate, it's usually very difficult and is therefore at your own risk and not recommended. You should not need to do it either, as every version you use will be amazing! There is a long term goal to make this much easier but no ETA at the moment.

How to turn off Webpack performance warnings after production build?

Webpack recommends having those performance hints turned off in development but to keep them on in production. If you still want to disable them, add the next lines to the config in webpack.prod.babel.js:

  performance: {
    hints: false
  }

You can find more information about the performance option (how to change maximum allowed size of a generated file, how to exclude some files from being checked and so on) in the Webpack documentation.

Styles getting overridden?

There is a strong chance that your styles are getting imported in the wrong order. Confused? Let me try and explain with an example!

// MyStyledComponent.js
const MyStyledComponent = styled.div`
  background-color: green;
`;

/* styles.css */
.alert {
  background-color: red;
}

// ContrivedExample.js
import MyStyledComponent from './MyStyledComponent';
import './styles.css';

const ContrivedExample = (props) => (
  <MyStyledComponent className="alert">
    {props.children}
  </MyStyledComponent>
);

With the magic of webpack, both MyStyledComponent.js and styles.css will each generate a stylesheet that will be injected at the end of <head> and applied to <MyStyledComponent> via the class attribute.

So, will <ContrivedExample> have a green background or a red background?

Applying the rules of specificity, you may think red as styles.css was imported last. Unfortunately, at the time of writing an open issue "CSS resolving order" means you cannot control the order in which the stylesheets are injected. So, with this contrived example, the background could be either green or red.

To resolve the issue, you can either:

1) Increase the specificity of the CSS you want to win

/* styles.css (imported css to win) */
.alert.alert {
  background-color: red;
}

// MyStyledComponent.js (styled-component css to win)
const MyStyledComponent = styled.div`
  && {
    background-color: green;
  }
`;

2) Import the CSS in the <head> of your index.html manually

This is a good choice if you are having issues with third-party styles and global-styles.js

// Import bootstrap style (e.g. move this into the <head> of index.html)
import 'bootstrap/dist/css/bootstrap.min.css'

// Import CSS reset and Global Styles
import './global-styles';

More information is available in the official documents.

Have another question?

Submit an issue, hop onto the Gitter channel or contact Max direct on twitter!