10 Fun Facts About Create React App

A few things you know and a few you probably don’t

Photo by Luca Upper on Unsplash

React is a JavaScript library for building user interfaces. It’s one of the most popular libraries for building single-page applications. Create React App is a quick way to scaffold a React project. In this way, you focus on code, rather than building tools.

Fact #1: You Can Create a Fully-Fledged Project With a Single Command

This magic command can be invoked by one of three ways:

npx create-react-app my-app
npm init react-app my-app
yarn create react-app my-app

Facebook pledges that all of its underlying pieces — Webpack, Babel, ESLint, Jest, etc — work together seamlessly.

Out of the box, the following scripts are set up:

npm start: Runs the app in development mode, and open http://localhost:3000 to view it in the browser.
npm run build: Builds the app for production to the build folder.
The build is minified and ready to be deployed.
npm test: Runs the test watcher in an interactive mode. It runs tests related to files changed since the last commit.

Fact #2: React Projects Can be Started With a Specific Template

The previous commands can be customized with a specific template:

npx create-react-app my-app --template [template-name]
npm init react-app my-app --template [template-name]
yarn create react-app my-app --template [template-name]

If you want to start with a React project with TypeScript, simply use the template, cra-template-typescript. The default template is cra-template.

If you want to take advantage of the community resources, try this website. There are currently 170 templates available.

Fact #3: One Dependency Is the First Philosophy of Create React App, and This Build Dependency Is Not in the…