Guestbook example app that runs on Google AppEngine Python backend with React frontend
I love using App Engine for my projects and for the next project I also wanted to use React for the frontend.
I've found some starter project for this configuration but it wasn't up-to-date and I also didn't support development very well.
So I've created my own solution.
During development you run npm start from the root directory which run in parallel both dev_appserver.py to run App Engine local dev-server and Webpack dev-server to support hot-reloading for React.
You can change both the python and React code and it reload instantly - how fun and productive it that 🐰
The backend run by default on port 8080 while the frontend run on port 3000.
During development you shold use port http://localhost:3000 to run your app to get the frontend content from Webpack dev-server.
When you ready to deploy run npm run deploy which will build the static files from your React application and copy it to the server/www directory.
Then it will run the required gcloud app deploy to deploy both your application and your indx.yaml.
You can set the App Engine project name and version to deploy inside package.json using the following JSON:
"appEngine": {
"project": "appengine-react-guestbook",
"version": "4"
}
The appEngine field is optional, you can instead relay on the settings of gcloud but it is recommended to explicitly set those values as it will make team development easier.
If those values are set they will be passed to gcloud during deployment.
/- The root directory is npm proejct which contain only scripts to run, build and deploy the application./server- contains the server-side python application/client- contain the client-side React application