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Vladimir Vovk
Vladimir Vovk

Posted on • Updated on

Starting React Native Project in 2024

#reactnative #typescript #expo

Updated to Expo 50.

There are many ways to start a new React Native project. Here we will be using Expo's create-expo-app command line tool because:

  • It has nice defaults out of the box.
  • It is compatible with Expo packages, which are usually very good, well-tested, and have excellent documentation.
  • We can easily switch to a "bare" react-native app at any moment with one npx expo eject command. See the docs to learn the difference between managed and bare workflows.

Also, we will add TypeScript, ESLint, Prettier, and some custom configurations that will make our development process better.

TLDR You can use one command npx create-expo-app -t expo-ts to create a new React Native project with all tools already set up for you (see README for details) or follow instructions below. 🤓

Please refer to the official React Native and Expo documentation for more details. 🤩

General setup

We will need Node.js, Git and Yarn before we start.

Please check React Native Setup Guide to ensure that everything is installed on your machine.

Awesome! 👍🏻
Now let's create a new app.

  1. Run npx create-expo-app command.
  2. Type your project name.
  3. Change the directory to your project with cd <your-project-name> command.
  4. Run yarn start to start Metro Bundler.
  5. Press i to start the iOS simulator or a to run the Android emulator.📱

Tools

TypeScript

Let's add TypeScript support.

  1. Create an empty tsconfig.json file in your project root: touch tsconfig.json.
  2. Rename App.js to App.tsx: mv App.js App.tsx.
  3. Run yarn start. It will prompt you to install the required dependencies (typescript, @types/react, @types/react-native), and automatically configure your tsconfig.json.

Absolute path imports

To use absolute path imports, e.g. import { ComponentA } from 'src/components/A' (notice path starts with src), we need to add baseUrl and paths parameters to the compilerOptions of tsconfig.json.

{
  "compilerOptions": {
    "baseUrl": "./",
    "paths": {
      "src/*": ["src/*"]
    },
    "strictNullChecks": true
  },
  ...
}
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Also, we need to create src/package.json file.

{
  "name": "src"
}
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Also, we will need to install the babel-plugin-module-resolver to be able to run our project on the web.

☝🏻 You can safely skip it, if you targeting only mobile platforms.

yarn add --dev babel-plugin-module-resolver
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Specify the plugin configuration in babel.config.js:

module.exports = function(api) {
  api.cache(true);
  return {
    // ... presets settings goes here
    plugins: [
      [
        'module-resolver',
        {
          root: ['.'],
          alias: {
            src: './src'
          }
        }
      ],
    ]
  };
};
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Move App.tsx to src folder

It's good to have all source files in one folder. So let's move App.tsx to src with mv App.tsx src command.

Next, we need to create a new App.js file inside our project's folder with touch App.js. And import our app logic there:

import App from 'src/App'

export default () => <App />
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Prettier

Prettier is an opinionated code formatter. Let's install it.

yarn add -D prettier
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We will also need .prettierrc.js config file in the project root.

module.exports = {
  semi: false,
  trailingComma: 'none',
  singleQuote: true,
  printWidth: 100,
  tabWidth: 2,
  useTabs: false,
}
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Sort imports

Unsorted imports look ugly. Also, it could be hard to read and add new imports. So why not sort them automatically? We can do it with trivago/prettier-plugin-sort-imports.

yarn add --dev @trivago/prettier-plugin-sort-imports
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Add plugin configuration to the Prettier config .prettierrc.js:

module.exports = {
  // ... prettier config here

  importOrderSeparation: true,
  importOrderSortSpecifiers: true,
  importOrderCaseInsensitive: true,
  importOrder: [
    '<THIRD_PARTY_MODULES>',
    // '^(.*)/components/(.*)$', // Add any folders you want to be separate
    '^src/(.*)$',
    '^(.*)/(?!generated)(.*)/(.*)$', // Everything not generated
    '^(.*)/generated/(.*)$', // Everything generated
    '^[./]' // Absolute path imports
  ]
}
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Check code for errors

We can use TypeScript compiler and ESLint for this.

TypeScript Compiler

Let's add a new check-typescript script to our package.json.

...
"scripts": {
  ...
  "check-typescript": "tsc --noEmit"
},
...
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Now we can run yarn check-typescript command to check our code for errors with the TypeScript compiler.

ESLint

ESLint has a lot of configuration options and rules. Let's start with the Expo eslint-config-universe package.

yarn add --dev eslint-config-universe
yarn add --dev eslint @typescript-eslint/eslint-plugin @typescript-eslint/parser
yarn add --dev eslint-plugin-react-hooks
yarn add --dev eslint-import-resolver-typescript
yarn add --dev eslint-plugin-prettier
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Add .eslintrc.js config file to the project root.

module.exports = {
  extends: ['universe', 'universe/shared/typescript-analysis', 'plugin:react-hooks/recommended'],
  overrides: [
    {
      files: ['*.ts', '*.tsx', '*.d.ts'],
      parserOptions: {
        project: './tsconfig.json'
      }
    }
  ],
  settings: {
    'import/resolver': {
      typescript: {} // this loads <rootdir>/tsconfig.json to ESLint
    }
  },
  /* for lint-staged */
  globals: {
    __dirname: true
  },
  rules: {
    'no-console': 'error'
  }
}
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Add a new check-eslint script to our package.json.

...
"scripts": {
  ...
  "check-eslint": "eslint './src/**/*{js,ts,jsx,tsx}'"
},
...
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Now we can run the yarn check-eslint command to check our code for errors with ESLint. And yarn check-eslint --fix to fix errors automatically.

Lint script

Let's combine TypeScript and ESLint checks together so we can run both at once.

Add a new lint script to our package.json.

...
"scripts": {
  ...
  "lint": "yarn check-typescript && yarn check-eslint"
},
...
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Changelog

We can use the standard-version tool to generate a changelog, bump the version of the app and create a new tag automatically.

How It Works:

yarn add --dev standard-version
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Create the .versionrc.js config:

module.exports = {
  types: [
    { type: 'feat', section: 'New features' },
    { type: 'fix', section: 'Bug fixes' },
    { type: 'change', section: 'Changes' },
    { type: 'chore', hidden: true },
    { type: 'docs', hidden: true },
    { type: 'style', hidden: true },
    { type: 'perf', hidden: true },
    { type: 'test', hidden: true }
  ]
}
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In this config, we enable the feat, fix, and change commit types. And if you want to enable the other commit types, you can remove the hidden boolean and replace it with the section string and provide a title.

Add new release script to package.json:

...
"scripts": {
  ...
  "release": "standard-version"
},
...
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Now when you are ready to release, just run the yarn release command.

Husky

Husky improves your commits and more 🐶 woof!

We will use Husky to check if our commit messages follow the conventional commits rules, run the lint check, and format staged code with Prettier and ESLint.

yarn add --dev husky
yarn add --dev @commitlint/config-conventional @commitlint/cli
yarn add --dev lint-staged
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Create a config for commitlint with commitlint.config.js file:

module.exports = {
  extends: ['@commitlint/config-conventional']
}
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Setup lint-staged with package.json > lint-staged configuration:

...
  "lint-staged": {
    "**/*.{js,jsx,ts,tsx}": [
      "eslint './src/**/*{js,ts,jsx,tsx}' --fix",
      "prettier --write './src/**/*{js,ts,jsx,tsx}'"
    ]
  },
...
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Configure Husky with:

npx husky init
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The init command simplifies setting up husky in a project. It creates a pre-commit script in .husky/ and updates the prepare script in package.json.

To add a pre-commit hook we need to replace everything inside the .husky/pre-commit file with:

npx --no-install lint-staged
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To add a commit message hook we need to create the .husky/commit-msg file with:

yarn lint && npx --no-install commitlint --edit "$1"
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SafeAreaContext

react-native-safe-area-context provides a flexible API for accessing device-safe area inset information.

npx expo install react-native-safe-area-context
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Wrap your App component with SafeAreaProvider:

import { SafeAreaProvider } from 'react-native-safe-area-context'

function App() {
  return <SafeAreaProvider>...</SafeAreaProvider>
}
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And now we can use the SafeAreaView component.

SafeAreaView is a regular View component with the safe area insets applied as padding or margin.

Test with Jest and React Native Testing Library

Jest is a delightful JavaScript Testing Framework with a focus on simplicity.

npx expo install jest-expo jest
yarn add --dev @types/jest
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Update the package.json to include:

"scripts": {
  ...
  "test": "jest"
}
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Jest has a number of globally-available functions, so we need to introduce these functions to ESLint with eslint-plugin-jest.

yarn add --dev eslint-plugin-jest
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Add 'jest' to the plugins section of the .eslintrc.js configuration file. We can omit the eslint-plugin- prefix:

module.exports = {
  ...
  plugins: ['jest']
}
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The React Native Testing Library helps you to write better tests with less effort and encourages good testing practices.

The jest-native library provides a set of custom jest matchers that you can use to extend jest. These will make your tests more declarative, clear to read, and maintain.

yarn add --dev @testing-library/react-native
yarn add --dev @testing-library/jest-native
yarn add --dev @testing-library/dom
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Now it is time to add the jest.config.js configuration file:

/** @type {import('jest').Config} */
const path = require('path')

const config = {
  preset: 'jest-expo',
  setupFilesAfterEnv: [path.join(__dirname, 'setup-testing.js')],
  transformIgnorePatterns: [
    'node_modules/(?!((jest-)?react-native|@react-native(-community)?)|expo(nent)?|@expo(nent)?/.*|@expo-google-fonts/.*|react-navigation|@react-navigation/.*|@unimodules/.*|unimodules|sentry-expo|native-base|react-native-svg)'
  ]
}

module.exports = config
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And setup-testing.js configuration file to make the jest-native library work:

import '@testing-library/jest-native/extend-expect'
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Let's also add eslint-plugin-testing-library and eslint-plugin-jest-dom. Both are ESLint plugins that help to follow best practices and anticipate common mistakes when writing tests with Testing Library. For more info, see the excellent Common mistakes with React Testing Library article by Kent C. Dodds. 🤓

yarn add --dev eslint-plugin-testing-library
yarn add --dev eslint-plugin-jest-dom
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Add 'testing-library' to the plugins section and 'plugin:testing-library/react' to the extends section of our .eslintrc.js configuration file:

module.exports = {
  ...
  extends: ['plugin:testing-library/react', 'plugin:jest-dom/recommended'],
  plugins: ['testing-library']
}
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Now we can write our first test to the src/App.test.tsx file:

import { render, screen } from '@testing-library/react-native'

import App from 'src/App'

describe('App', () => {
  it('should mount without errors', () => {
    expect(() => render(<App />)).not.toThrow()
  })

  it('should unmount without errors', () => {
    render(<App />)
    expect(() => screen.unmount()).not.toThrow()
  })
})
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And run it with the yarn test command.

What to add next?

Credits

Photo by SpaceX on Unsplash.

You can find the 👴🏻 2022 version of this article here.

Please post your favorite tools in the comments, press the 💖 button, and happy hacking! 🙌🏻

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