create-react-app with a Node server on Heroku

A minimal example of using a Node backend (server for API, proxy, & routing) with a React frontend.

To deploy a frontend-only React app, use the static-site optimized
▶️ create-react-app-buildpack

⤵️ Switching from create-react-app-buildpack?

Design Points

A combo of two npm projects, the backend server and the frontend UI. So there are two package.json configs.

1. package.json for Node server & Heroku deploy
   • heroku-postbuild script compiles the webpack bundle during deploy
   • cacheDirectories includes react-ui/node_modules/ to optimize build time
2. react-ui/package.json for React web UI
   • generated by create-react-app

Demo

Demo deployment: example API call from the React UI is fetched with a relative URL that is served by an Express handler in the Node server.

Deploy to Heroku

git clone https://github.com/mars/heroku-cra-node.git
cd heroku-cra-node/
heroku create
git push heroku master

This deployment will automatically:

• detect Node buildpack
• build the app with
  • npm install for the Node server
  • heroku-postbuild for create-react-app
• launch the web process with npm start
  • serves ../react-ui/build/ as static files
  • customize by adding API, proxy, or route handlers/redirectors

👓 More about deploying to Heroku.

Switching from create-react-app-buildpack

If an app was previously deployed with create-react-app-buildpack, then a few steps are required to migrate the app to this architecture:

1. Remove create-react-app-buildpack from the app; heroku/nodejs buildpack will be automatically activated

   heroku buildpacks:clear

2. Move the root React app files (including dotfiles) into a react-ui/ subdirectory

   mkdir react-ui
   git mv [!react-ui]* react-ui/
   # You'll see "fatal: Not a git repository"; let's fix that error
   mv react-ui/.git ./

3. Create a root package.json, server/, & .gitignore modeled after the code in this repo

4. Commit and deploy ♻️

   git add -A
   git commit -m 'Migrate from create-react-app-buildpack to Node server'
   git push heroku master

Local Development

Run the API Server

In a terminal:

# Initial setup
npm install

# Start the server
npm start

Run the React UI

The React app is configured to proxy backend requests to the local Node server. (See "proxy" config)

In a separate terminal from the API server, start the UI:

# Always change directory, first
cd react-ui/

# Initial setup
npm install

# Start the server
npm start