Build an Epic React App 🚀 EpicReact.Dev
Building a full React application
The React and JavaScript ecosystem is full of tools and libraries to help
you build your applications. In this (huge) workshop we’ll build an
application from scratch using widely supported and proven tools and
techniques. We’ll cover everything about building frontend React
applications, from the absolute basics to the tricky parts you'll run into
building real world React apps and how to create great abstractions.

Prerequisites
- You'll want experience with React before going through this material. The
lessons get progressively more advanced. Once you hit something you're
unfamiliar with, that's your cue to go back and review the other parts of
EpicReact.Dev.
NOTE: The EpicReact.dev videos were recorded with React version ^16.13 and all
material in this repo has been updated to React version ^18. Differences are
minor and any relevant differences are noted in the instructions.
System Requirements
- git v2.13 or greater
- NodeJS
>=16
- npm v8.16.0 or greater
All of these must be available in your PATH. To verify things are set up
properly, you can run this:
git --version
node --version
npm --version
If you have trouble with any of these, learn more about the PATH environment
variable and how to fix it here for windows or
mac/linux.
Demo
Hosted on https://bookshelf.lol
Setup
If you want to commit and push your work as you go, you'll want to
fork
first and then clone your fork rather than this repo directly.
After you've made sure to have the correct things (and versions) installed, you
should be able to just run a few commands to get set up:
git clone https://github.com/kentcdodds/bookshelf.git
cd bookshelf
node setup
This may take a few minutes.
If you get any errors, please read through them and see if you can find out what
the problem is. If you can't work it out on your own then please file an
issue and provide all the output from the commands you ran (even if
it's a lot).
If you can't get the setup script to work, then just make sure you have the
right versions of the requirements listed above, and run the following commands:
npm install
npm run validate
If you are still unable to fix issues and you know how to use Docker 🐳 you can
setup the project with the following command:
docker-compose up
It's recommended you run everything locally in the same environment you work in
every day, but if you're having issues getting things set up, you can also set
this up using GitHub Codespaces
(video demo) or
Codesandbox.
Running the app
To get the app up and running (and really see if it worked), run:
npm start
This should start up your browser. If you're familiar, this is a standard
react-scripts application.
You can also open the production deployment:
bookshelf.lol.
Running the tests
npm test
This will start Jest in watch mode. Read the output and
play around with it. The tests are there to help you reach the final version,
however sometimes you can accomplish the task and the tests still fail if you
implement things differently than I do in my solution, so don't look to them as
a complete authority.
Working through the exercises
To get started, run:
node go
This will allow you to choose which exercise you want to work on. From there,
open the INSTRUCTIONS.md file and follow the instructions.
If you'd like to work on an extra credit, but you want to skip the preceding
steps, you can run node go again:
node go
This will let you choose the next exercise or you can choose which part of the
exercise you'd like to work on. This will update your exercise files to the
correct version for you to work on that extra credit.
Exercises
The exercises are in different branches. Each branch changes the
INSTRUCTIONS.md file to contain instructions you need to complete the
exercise.
The purpose of the exercise is not for you to work through all the material.
It's intended to get your brain thinking about the right questions to ask me as
I walk through the material.
Helpful Emoji 🐨 💰 💯 📝 🦉 📜 💣 💪 🏁 👨💼 🚨
Each exercise has comments in it to help you get through the exercise. These fun
emoji characters are here to help you.
- Kody the Koala 🐨 will tell you when there's something specific you should
do version
- Marty the Money Bag 💰 will give you specific tips (and sometimes code)
along the way
- Hannah the Hundred 💯 will give you extra challenges you can do if you
finish the exercises early.
- Nancy the Notepad 📝 will encourage you to take notes on what you're
learning
- Olivia the Owl 🦉 will give you useful tidbits/best practice notes and a
link for elaboration and feedback.
- Dominic the Document 📜 will give you links to useful documentation
- Berry the Bomb 💣 will be hanging around anywhere you need to blow stuff
up (delete code)
- Matthew the Muscle 💪 will indicate that you're working with an exercise
- Chuck the Checkered Flag 🏁 will indicate that you're working with a final
- Peter the Product Manager 👨💼 helps us know what our users want
- Alfred the Alert 🚨 will occasionally show up in the test failures with
potential explanations for why the tests are failing.
Workflow
- Checkout the exercise branch
- Read through the
INSTRUCTIONS.md
- Start exercise
- Go through every mentioned file and follow the instructions from the emoji
- We all come back together
- I go through the solution and answer questions
- Move on to the next exercise.
- Repeat.
App Data Model
-
User
- id: string
- username: string
-
List Item
- id: string
- bookId: string
- ownerId: string
- rating: number (-1 is no rating, otherwise it's 1-5)
- notes: string
- startDate: number (
Date.now())
- finishDate: number (
Date.now())
For convenience, our friendly backend engineers also return a book object on
each list item which is the book it's associated to. Thanks backend folks!
/me wishes we could use GraphQL
If your "database" gets out of whack, you can purge it via:
window.__bookshelf.purgeUsers()
window.__bookshelf.purgeListItems()
-
Book
- id: string
- title: string
- author: string
- coverImageUrl: string
- pageCount: number
- publisher: string
- synopsis: string
Troubleshooting
Running "node go" does not list any branches
This means there was something wrong when you ran the setup.
If you made your own fork of bookshelf through GitHub, you may have only got
the main branch -- that's the default option
Add a new upstream remote
git remote add upstream https://github.com/kentcdodds/bookshelf.git
You might get an error: remote upstream already exists. -- no problem!
Track all the branches from that original repository
git push origin --tags "refs/remotes/upstream/*:refs/heads/*"
Contributors
Thanks goes to these wonderful people
(emoji key):
 Kent C. Dodds 💻 📖 🚇 ⚠️ |  Vojta Holik 🎨 💻 |  Richard B. Kaufman-López 💻 |  Sekib Omazic 📖 |  Justin Dorfman 🔍 |  Nash Kabbara 📖 💻 🐛 |  UMAIR MOHAMMAD 💻 |
 onemen 💻 |  Artem Zakharchenko 💻 |  Leonardo Elias 💻 |  Oluwaseun Oyebade 🐛 |  Wes Bos 🤔 |  Jesse Jafa 🤔 |  Huy Dang 🐛 |
 Gabriel Abud 📖 |  Kody Clemens 📖 |  calec 📖 |  Emmanouil Zoumpoulakis 💻 |  Christian Schurr 💻 🐛 |  Bob Massarczyk 📖 |  Deepak Chandani 💻 |
 Juliano Farias ⚠️ |  Robbert Wolfs 📖 💻 |  komisz 🐛 |  Michaël De Boey 📆 💻 |  Marco Moretti 💻 |  Vasilii Kovalev 💻 📖 |  Peramanathan Sathyamoorthy 💻 |
 William BEUIL 💻 |  Andrew Li 📖 |  Tony Khaov 📖 |  Stijn Geens 📖 |  Andrés Gallego 🤔 |  Michal Juriš 🐛 |  jkmuka 🐛 |
 raqib-rasheed 🐛 |  Luke-kb 📖 |  Peter Hozák 💻 |  Chris Chuang 💻 🐛 |  Valentin Hervieu 📖 |  ~Sami Triki 📖 |  Ryan Boone 📖 |
 Juan Latorre 🐛 |  Roch Goszczyński 💻 🐛 |  Hendrik Mittrop 💻 |  payapula 📖 |  Jelte Homminga 📖 |  Omri Dagan 📖 |  Justin Domingue 📖 |
 Marc-Antoine Ferland 📖 |  Mario Sannum 💻 |  jansabbe 📖 |  Aswin 📖 |  Iacopo Pazzaglia 📖 |  Luciano Ayres 📖 |  Sadi Kaya 📖 |
 Rowin Hernández 📖 |  Arturo Pie 💻 |  Caleb Jasik 📖 |  Server Khalilov 📖 |  Angad Sethi 📖 |  Mary 📖 |  Diego Cardoso 📖 |
 kmccoan 📖 |  Ehsan Tatasadi 📖 |  PM6 💻 |  benjaminmatthews 📖 |  juliane nagao 📖 |  Creeland A. Provinsal 📖 |  Jake McCambley 📖 |
This project follows the
all-contributors
specification. Contributions of any kind welcome!
Workshop Feedback
Each exercise has an Elaboration and Feedback link. Please fill that out after
the exercise and instruction.
At the end of the workshop, please go to this URL to give overall feedback.
Thank you!
- Part 1: https://kcd.im/bra1-ws-feedback
- Part 2: https://kcd.im/bra2-ws-feedback
- Part 3: https://kcd.im/bra3-ws-feedback
- Part 4: https://kcd.im/bra4-ws-feedback