Reactjs Project Structure and Best Practices

Introduction to ReactJs Project Structure

ReactJS, a popular JavaScript library for building user interfaces, boasts a flexible and component-based architecture that allows for the creation of dynamic and interactive web applications. Understanding the project structure of a ReactJS application is crucial for developers to ensure maintainability, scalability, and effective collaboration within teams. This introduction will outline the key components of a typical ReactJS project structure, highlighting best practices for organizing files and directories to enhance clarity and efficiency in development.

What is React?

It is a JavaScript library created by Facebook, a User Interface(UI) library, and a tool for building UI components. 

Best practices are followed for doing projects in the right structure. Almost all the time, the create-react-app we use creates an app with no build configuration. In this blog, we will build our boilerplate. Let us look at the best boilerplate structures that most of the community prefers.

What is the architecture of its application?

React library is just a UI library. It does not enforce any pattern to writing a complex application. The Developers are free to choose the design pattern. The community advocates specific design patterns. One of the patterns is the Flux pattern. React library also has a lot of concepts like Higher Order components, Context, Render props, Refs, etc., to write better code. 

A process which is used for increasing the quality of a software or a product and for improving it by identifying defects, problems, and errors. Click to explore about, JavaScript and ReactJS Unit Testing

How to Structure React Project?

We have read many articles where each article explains the boilerplate, and we might get confused about which one is the best approach.

There is no "best project architecture" that will fit with any project and coding style.
But you should always structure your project. It doesn't follow any particular project structure, and the positive thing about this is that it allows us to make up a structure to suit our needs. The discussion here is simply an opinionated way to structure a project. You can utilise some parts or all of them for your project. So let’s get started.

Project Setup for React

First, let’s set up the development environment

1. VS Code with various extensions as a code editor.
2. Google Chrome as a browser provides multiple developer-friendly tools for debugging.
3. As a debugging tool, React developer tools and Redux DevTools are very useful.

Now we can use CLI to create a new project.

React js that is created using ‘create-react-app' gives some default code. Let’s delete almost everything, like logos, images, styling, etc., and keep the skeleton application, and now we can start doing our folder structure.

What is the Folder Structure for the React Project?

The folder structure looks like this.

• Assets Folder
• Layouts Folder
• Components Folder
• Pages Folder
• Middle ware Folder
• Routes Folder
• Config Folder
• Services Folder
• Utils Folder

Assets Folder

As the name says, it contains assets of our project. It consists of images and styling files. Here we can store our global styles. We are centralizing the project so we can store the page-based or component-based styles over here. But we can even keep style according to the pages folder or component folder also. But that depends on developer comfortability.

Layouts Folder

As the name says, it contains layouts available to the whole project like header, footer, etc. We can store the header, footer, or sidebar code here and call it.

Components Folder

Components are the building blocks of any react project. This folder consists of a collection of UI components like buttons, modals, inputs, loader, etc., that can be used across various files in the project. Each component should consist of a test file to do a unit test as it will be widely used in the project.

Pages Folder

The files in the pages folder indicate the route of the react application. Each file in this folder contains its route. A page can contain its sub folder. Each page has its state and is usually used to call an sync operation. It usually consists of various components grouped.

Middle ware Folder

This folder consists of middleware that allows for side effects in the application. It is used when we are using reduce with it. Here, we keep all our custom middleware.

Routes Folder

This folder contains all the application's routes, including private, protected, and all types of routes. Here, we can even call our sub-route.

Config Folder

This folder consists of a configuration file where we store environment variables in config.js. We will use this file to set up multi-environment configurations in your application.

Services Folder

This folder will be added if we use redux in your project. Inside it, there are 3 folders named actions, reducers, and constant subfolders to manage states. The actions and reducers will be called in almost all the pages, so create actions, reducers & constants according to pages name.

Utils Folder

Utils folder consists of some repeatedly used functions that are commonly used in the project. It should contain only common js functions & objects like dropdown options, regex condition, data formatting, etc.

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Conclusion Reactjs Project Structure

In conclusion, establishing an efficient project structure for React.js is essential for maintaining clarity, scalability, and ease of collaboration. A well-organized structure, rooted in a component-based architecture, promotes modularity by allowing developers to create reusable components that are easier to test, maintain, and navigate. As projects expand, a clear directory layout becomes increasingly important, allowing for straightforward management of files and components, whether through feature-based grouping or a separation of presentation and logic.

This separation of concerns aids in isolating responsibilities, minimizing complexity when debugging or enhancing features. Additionally, integrating tooling such as ESLint and Prettier from the outset contributes to maintaining code quality and consistency, particularly in team environments. Thorough documentation of the project structure and components further aids new team members in understanding the codebase quickly. Finally, recognizing the need for adaptability in your project organization is vital; the best structure may evolve as the application grows or as new best practices emerge. By adhering to these principles, you ensure that your React.js project is not only well-structured for current needs but also ready to face future challenges, ultimately fostering a clean and efficient development experience.