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Deploying a React app with React-Router and an Express Backend

Nicolas Rousseau Burgess on June 19, 2018

In this article we will cover how to create a React application using React-Router for routing and an Express backend. We will then deploy it to He...

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Ahmed Rebai • Jun 24 '18

are you interested to form a team for reactjs freelance projects ? i'm looking for react developers everyway

DeveloperAsad • May 24 '19

Hi,
how are you doing

i am interested to be a part of experienced developers to enhance my skills
i am a software engineer having 5 years or working experience in mobile web and desktop apps development

looking forward to hearing from you soon

best regards
devasad

B_aaS • Oct 11 '19

I am really interested. Is this still up?

Olajide Olaniyan • Aug 23 '19

Interested in this Ahmed

Jose Rodriguez • Jan 11 '19

Hi Ahmed,

I am interested in undertaking React projects. I am fairly new to it, but I am confident I can contribute in a React team. Feel free to contact me if you want to continue our conversation.

MohananT • Aug 6 '18

Hi Ahmed, I am very much interested in React projects. You can contact me anytime

Tanveer Ali • Mar 29 '20

Hey Ahemd,

Lemme know if this is still open, I'm interested

SACHIN CHAND • May 12 '19

Hi,

First of all thanks for the article, it is a great help.:D
I have done all the things you mentioned and I am facing 2 issues,
1) res.json() in List.js gives an error that '<' token is found i.e. syntax error but I didn't use the method just for sake to deploy on heroku.
2) I deployed on heroku succesfully but when I open my app on heroku I am shown "Not Found" error (most probably 404).

Can you help?

Joshua Kinslow • May 14 '19

i have the same issue with deploying to heroku.

GN • Jun 11 '19

Be sure to remove the git folder (generated by Create React App) in the client directory. Doing so will allow Heroku to build your React app and fix the "Not Found" error.

davegrnr • Jan 7 '22

I'm running into the same problem now - did you ever happen to find a solution to this?

Koen Verheyen • Jan 23 '19

What is the purpose of npm install --only=dev in the heroku-postbuild script for building the client? I tried removing that bit and it still worked.

Nicolas Rousseau Burgess • Jan 23 '19

At the time of writing, I believe that Heroku installed only the production dependencies by default, ignoring the development dependencies under devDependencies. npm install --only=dev had to be added for the project to build correctly. I think this default behavior has been changed so it may no longer be needed!

jnusan • Nov 17 '18

Hey, Nicolas thank you for this awesome tutorial, it's was very helpful to understand the connection between both layers.

I create my own project structure using KeystoneJS and react and was great! I'm using in my personal projects right now.

Mohamed • Oct 10 '19

Error when typing "npm start" in home directory

thats what it says
npm ERR! code ELIFECYCLE
npm ERR! errno 255
npm ERR! react-express-ex@1.0.0 start: node ../index.js | react-scripts start
npm ERR! Exit status 255
npm ERR!
npm ERR! Failed at the react-express-ex@1.0.0 start script.
npm ERR! This is probably not a problem with npm. There is likely additional logging output above.

npm ERR! A complete log of this run can be found in:

any solution to this problem

Aaron Planell López • Nov 8 '18 • Edited

Hello Nicolas,

First of all, thanks a lot for your work. Anyway, I have an issue with your project. If you run the server and then:

cd client
npm install
npm run build
http-server build

The App will be deployed in localhost:8080 and works. But, if I access to the list and reload the page:

[Thu Nov 08 2018 11:35:00 GMT+0100 (GMT+01:00)] "GET /list" Error (404): "Not found"

That's because the HTTP static server doesn't found the list file.

I'm pretty sure that if you access directly to: yourHerokuServer/list you will find the same problem.

There is a little workaround: copy the index.html to list and mark its content type as text/html, but I strongly believe that we need another solution to this issue :/

Thanks for your time.

UPDATE: Same question resolved here: stackoverflow.com/questions/279283...

John Costanzo • Jun 19 '18 • Edited

So I would need to run npm start for both express and the client? Is the proxy you added just for local development? How would I deploy this test code of yours to production

Nicolas Rousseau Burgess • Jun 19 '18

You would need to run npm start for both locally. It works in production as well, I'll add a section on deployment tonight.

Ryan McCoy • Dec 13 '18

For running locally from your ./client folder, you can modify your package.json script to start both at the same time:

"scripts": {
    "start": "node ../index.js | react-scripts start",
    ...
}

And when you ^C to terminate batch job, it will terminate both front and back localhosts.

John Costanzo • Jun 19 '18

Thanks. I would guess you would want to compile the code in the client folder so yeah, would love to read about that process

Nicolas Rousseau Burgess • Jun 20 '18

I've added a short section, I hope that everything is clear

John Costanzo • Jun 20 '18

Yes this makes sense. Your creating a Node Heroku setup and it will run that. Thanks

Alonzo Moses • Nov 19 '19

I'm getting this error when I try to start the react app:

Failed to compile
./src/index.js
Module not found: Can't resolve 'react-router-dom' in 'C:\Users...'

I followed the tutorial. Am I missing something?

m-milmore • May 8 '20

in client folder do npm install react-router-dom. It wasn't mentioned in the tutorial

usamamashkoor • Feb 4 '19

I have a followed your approach but i am facing a issue.

I have one home page route at express from which i want to pass through a middle-ware function isResturantOpen when ever the user visits the react app.

app.get('/',passportConfig.isResturantOpen, (req,res) =>{
console.log('reached')
res.sendFile(path.join(__dirname+'/client/build/index.html'));
});

but when i ever i tries to visit my website home of react.js at this url
localhost:5000/ then my above route does not work

but all the routes are being going to this main route.

app.get('*', (req,res) =>{
console.log(req)
// console.log(res)
res.sendFile(path.join(__dirname+'/client/build/index.html'));
});

so now if i want to apply some different express.js middle ware functions on each different routes then how can i do this..?

Can you please help me on this.?

jsampayoramos • Oct 9 '19

Hi Nicolas,
Thanks for this article. It was really useful for me to get started with a React/Express project.
I would like to ask you if there is a way to deploy by uploading a build folder manually to a server. I am a React beginner so apologies for any mistake in my question.
Kind regards,
João

dbMI • Aug 8 '19

I have the same problem. The router entry in package.json doesn't seem to be working. the /api calls still go to the react app on port 3000.
Here is my package.json file:
{
"name": "ubwo",
"version": "0.1.0",
"private": true,
"proxy":"localhost:5000/",
"dependencies": {
"react": "^16.8.6",
"react-dom": "^16.8.6",
"react-redux": "^7.1.0",
"react-router": "^5.0.1",
"react-router-dom": "^5.0.1",
"react-scripts": "3.0.1",
"redux": "^4.0.1",
"redux-thunk": "^2.3.0"
},
"scripts": {
"start": "react-scripts start",
"build": "react-scripts build",
"test": "react-scripts test",
"eject": "react-scripts eject"
},
"eslintConfig": {
"extends": "react-app"
},
"browserslist": {
"production": [
">0.2%",
"not dead",
"not op_mini all"
],
"development": [
"last 1 chrome version",
"last 1 firefox version",
"last 1 safari version"
]
},
"resolutions": {
"browserslist": "4.6.2",
"caniuse-lite": "1.0.30000974"
}
}

Any ideas what I can try to get this working?

James Gary • Sep 7 '19 • Edited

You could try using http://localhost:5000 instead of what you have now (localhost:5000/). (Actually, having written that I'm not sure that IS the problem...this board seems to be reformatting URLs that aren't backtick-ed.)

Just FYI: I started from zero with this tutorial a few hours ago and got everything 100% working (including a Heroku deploy). So any bugs you might encounter are probably not in the posted code.

codingjlu • Dec 20 '21

path.join should be passed two arguments. It's redundant the way you're using it in your main express file.

James Harper • Apr 4 '19

Hi Nicolas,

Thanks for the article. It seems that when I make the fetch request for the list at ('api/getList') I get a 404 error. It seems that the request is ignoring the proxy and trying to go to 'localhost:300/api/getList' rather than 'localhost:5000/api/getList'.

If I fully define the path in the fetch request ie fetch('localhost:5000/api/getList') then I get an error:
Access to fetch at 'localhost:5000/api/getList' from origin 'localhost:3000' has been blocked by CORS policy: blah blah blah

I understand that one should never really unblock CORS. So my question is, how to I make get requests to my server? And what is the point in the 'proxy' if it does not solve this problem?

SACHIN CHAND • Jun 12 '19

try adding cors headers if you're facing the cors related problem

Ryan McCoy • Dec 13 '18

Super helpful guide! Straight forward setup and introduced me to some technologies and concepts.

Rexyou • Sep 18 '21 • Edited

Hi Nicolas, I had follow your steps to do a easier version. But When I deploy to heroku, it's just present "Not Found", could you please advice any solution for current heroku deployment? Below provided client side package json

Rexyou • Sep 19 '21

Hi Nicholas, I had found out the reason that my page is showing "Not Found". May I know is there anyway to push the client folder to heroku? Because I cloned the whole file and found out my client folder is totally empty.