Example Using react.js in CodeIgniter 4 application

Introduction

A CodeIgniter 4 Skeleton Application with react.js integration.

Features

• SPA application with React Router DOM with cached pages after visited.
• Using server side template from CodeIgniter 4, eval'd with DOMPurify it first.
• Webpack support for production

Setup

1. Run composer create-project command:

composer create-project samsonasik/ci4-react

2. Copy file ci4-react/env to ci4-react/.env:

cp ci4-react/env ci4-react/.env

3. Set environment and app configuration

Open ci4-react/.env and set CI_ENVIRONMENT, app.baseURL, app.indexPage:

# file ci4-react/.env
CI_ENVIRONMENT = development

app.baseURL    = 'http://localhost:8080'
app.indexPage  = ''

4. Run PHP Development server

# go to ci4-react directory
cd ci4-react

# run php development server inside ci4-react directory
php spark serve

5. Open web browser http://localhost:8080

Production

For deploy to production purpose, it has webpack.config.js in root directory that when we run webpack command, we can get public/js/dist/bundle.js after run it. If you don't have a webpack installed yet in your system, you can install nodejs and install webpack and webpack-cli:

sudo npm install -g webpack
sudo npm install -g webpack-cli

So, we can run:

webpack

Hash: e1fc11a2dd1c76b96bee
Version: webpack 4.43.0
Time: 506ms
Built at: 07/02/2020 10:09:56 PM
                   Asset      Size  Chunks             Chunk Names
public/js/dist/bundle.js  2.37 KiB       0  [emitted]  main
Entrypoint main = public/js/dist/bundle.js
[0] ./public/js/create-page.js 1.15 KiB {0} [built]
[1] ./public/js/app.js + 2 modules 2.28 KiB {0} [built]
    | ./public/js/app.js 1.63 KiB [built]
    | ./public/js/about.js 130 bytes [built]
    | ./public/js/Navigation.js 529 bytes [built]

After it generated, we can update .env file as follow:

# file .env
CI_ENVIRONMENT = production

app.baseURL    = 'https://www.your-website.com'
app.indexPage  = ''

In app/Views/layout.php, we have a ENVIRONMENT check to use js/app.js when on development, and use /js/dist/bundle.js on production when exists.

// src/App/templates/layout/default.phtml
<?php $isDevelopment = ENVIRONMENT === 'development'; ?>

// ...
    <script src="<?php echo base_url($isDevelopment
            ? '/js/app.js'
            : (
                // when after run webpack, allow to use bundled js
                // fallback to use /js/app.js when not
                file_exists(ROOTPATH . 'public/js/dist/bundle.js')
                    ? '/js/dist/bundle.js'
                    : '/js/app.js'
            )) ?>" type="module"></script>
// ...

that will automatically take care of that.