Build an inventory management app with Azure Static Web Apps with + React, part 1

This is part of #30DaysOfSWA

In this series, I'll take you from the very beginning on generating a React app and deploying it within 5 minutes. In the upcoming parts, I'll keep building on the same app, and add things like backend and other things.

Scenario

You are looking at prototyping a new inventory management system. There are two things you want to test out:

• React, you want that client like experience, you hear a lot of companies are using React.
• Azure Static Web Apps, there's this service on Azure that not only lets you store static files, but you can add a backend and auth to it.

Time to evaluate.

Create a React App

To build your frontend app, you want to get up and running fast. You start reading up and realize there's a lot of ways to get started:

• Just CDN, this works when you just want to try it out. You want something you can keep building on.
• Create React App, that's definitely a good choice, also mentioned in official React docs.
• Vite. https://vitejs.dev/, this looks really promising
• Webpack, also an excellent choice, many good guides out there for building a React app, for example, https://levelup.gitconnected.com/how-to-setup-a-react-application-with-webpack-f781b5c4a4ab
• Snowpack, you've heard a colleague swear by this one, so you decide to check it out, https://www.snowpack.dev/tutorials/react

You look at Snowpack and it looks like very few commands to get started, and you decide to give it a try.

Generate project using Snowpack

To create a project with Snowpack, it's one line of code:

1. Run the below command to generate a Snowpack project:
   

   npx create-snowpack-app react-snowpack --template @snowpack/app-template-minimal
   

   You get a set of files, at this point, you have a Snowpack project but not really a React app.

   Lets see that it works though:

2. Run the below commands to start your Snowpack generated app:
   

   cd react-snowpack
   npm run start

In a browser, at http://localhost:8080/, you should see "Welcome to Snowpack".

Add React

Let's add the needed dependencies next to add support for React:

1. Run npm install to install React:
   

   npm install react react-dom --save
   

2. Run mv to rename your index.js to index.jsx:
   

   mv index.js index.jsx
   

   Now, you have a file in which you will bootstrap your React app.

3. In index.jsx, add the below code:
   

   import React from 'react';
   import ReactDOM from 'react-dom';
   
   import {StrictMode} from 'react';
   import {createRoot} from 'react-dom/client';
   import App from './App'
   
   const rootElement = document.getElementById('root');
   const root = createRoot(rootElement);
   
   root.render(
     <StrictMode>
       <App />
     </StrictMode>,
   );
   

4. Create App.jsx and give it the following code:
   

   import React from 'react';
   
   function App() {
     return (<div>App</div>)
   }
   
   export default App
   

5. Modify index.html and give it the following element:
   

    <div id="root"></div>
   

   At this point, you have a working React app. Try running it locally with npm start.

Plan your deployment

In order to use Azure Static Web App, we need to first:

• Create a GitHub repo.
• Create a local repo and sync with GitHub repo.
• Add a commit.

Create repo

Go to GitHub and create a repo, name it anything you want, in below example, we've named snowpack-demo.

Run the below commands in your console:

  echo "# snowpack-demo" >> README.md
  git init
  git add.
  git commit -m "first commit"
  git branch -M main
  git remote add origin https://github.com/softchris/snowpack-demo.git
  git push -u origin main

Your app is now pushed to your GitHub repo. Next, let's deploy to Azure.

SWA

Ensure you have downloaded the Azure Static Web Apps extension for Visual Studio code, and also ensure you have an Azure account.

1. Select Azure logo in the left menu in Visual Studio Code.
2. Select the + icon in Static Web Apps section.
3. Follow the series of steps
   1. Select subscription
   2. Give name of app
   3. Location of app / (if you have your app in sub directory app, you need to type /app)
   4. Select template, React.
   5. Specify folder where your app is built build

Your app is now deploying, you can now either click the message popup that says "open actions in GitHub" or go to your repo on GitHub and the actions tab. 1-2 min later, or less, you will be shown a deploy URL in Visual Studio Code, select it.

Congrats, you deployed your app to Azure. Here's my app:

https://happy-wave-036ec970f.1.azurestaticapps.net/

What's next

You have just started; this was part 1. In the next part, we will be improving our app by giving it a better UI and support routing. Throughout all this, Azure Static Web App will support us.