React + Flask starter kit

A quick starter repo that includes Flask and React, with Babel and Webpack. For proof-of-concept projects, workshop settings, etc where you don't want to worry about developer setup or writing config files.

TLDR; for the quick and dirty setup, install your dependencies:

pip install virtualenv
virtualenv venv; source venv/bin/activate
pip install -r requirements.txt
npm install -g webpack; npm install

Then in two separate tabs run python app.py and webpack --watch. Make edits to js/Hello.js and app.py to edit the frontend and backend, respectively.

These steps are explained in more detail below.

Prerequisites

You'll need some package managers.

• npm
• pip

Setup

For the backend:

virtualenv venv
source venv/bin/activate
pip install -r requirements.txt

For the frontend:

If you don't have webpack, install it:

npm install -g webpack

Then, use npm to install the remaining JavaScript dependencies.

npm install

Development

The entry point for the app is in js/app.js. The starter React component is js/Hello.js. Editing this file is a good place to start.

While developing on the frontend, run webpack --watch to keep re-compiling your JavaScript code.

Running webpack creates a file in static/bundle.js, which is the bundled version of your frontend code.

The "backend" here is a bare-bones Flask app. Look in app.py if you want to make edits to the backend.

To run the application, follow the steps in the next section.

Running the app

If you're using a virtualenv, activate it.

source venv/bin/activate

Then run the Flask app:

python app.py