Ignite Bowser - the hottest React Native boilerplate

Infinite Red's latest and greatest React Native boilerplate

Once you've installed React Native and the Ignite CLI, you can get started with this boilerplate.

This is the boilerplate that the Infinite Red team recommends and uses on a day-to-day basis. Prior art includes Ignite Andross.

Includes:

React Native
React Navigation
MobX State Tree (Why MST?)
TypeScript
Reactotron (requires 2.x)
And more!

To see it in action, check out the Chain React 2019 Conference App!

Quick Start

Prerequisite: install the React Native CLI -- choose React Native CLI, not Expo.

First, install Ignite CLI globally:

npm install -g ignite-cli
# or
yarn global add ignite-cli

Then spin up a new Bowser-powered React Native app:

ignite new MyApp -b bowser

cd into your new app and run react-native run-ios or react-native run-android (note: in Android you'll need an Android emulator running or an Android phone attached).

You should see an app that looks like the screenshot above!

Next step -- follow this tutorial to learn how to create a trivia app with Ignite Bowser: https://shift.infinite.red/creating-a-trivia-app-with-ignite-bowser-part-1-1987cc6e93a1

Explanation of folder structure

The Ignite Bowser boilerplate project's structure will look similar to this:

ignite-project
├── app
│   ├── components
│   ├── i18n
│   ├── models
│   ├── navigation
│   ├── screens
│   ├── services
│   ├── theme
│   ├── utils
│   ├── app.tsx
│   ├── environment-variables.ts
├── storybook
│   ├── views
│   ├── index.ts
│   ├── storybook-registry.ts
│   ├── storybook.ts
├── test
│   ├── __snapshots__
│   ├── storyshots.test.ts.snap
│   ├── mock-i18n.ts
│   ├── mock-reactotron.ts
│   ├── setup.ts
│   ├── storyshots.test.ts
├── README.md
├── android
├── ignite
│   ├── ignite.json
│   └── plugins
├── index.js
├── ios
└── package.json

./app directory

Included in an Ignite boilerplate project is the app directory. This is a directory you would normally have to create when using vanilla React Native.

The inside of the app directory looks similar to the following:

app
│── components
│── i18n
├── models
├── navigation
├── screens
├── services
├── theme
├── utils
├── app.tsx

components This is where your React dumb components will live. Each component will have a directory containing the .tsx file, along with a story file, and optionally .presets, and .props files for larger components. The app will come with some commonly used components like Button.

i18n This is where your translations will live if you are using react-native-i18n.

models This is where your app's models will live. Each model has a directory which will contain the mobx-state-tree model file, test file, and any other supporting files like actions, types, etc. There's also an extensions directory with useful shared extensions that you can include in your models like .extend(withRootStore) or .extend(withEnvironment) to access the root store or environment respectively.

navigation This is where your react-navigation navigators will live.

screens This is where your screen components will live. A screen is a React component which will take up the entire screen and be part of the navigation hierarchy. Each screen will have a directory containing the .tsx file, along with any assets or other helper files.

services Any services that interface with the outside world will live here (think REST APIs, Push Notifications, etc.).

theme Here lives the theme for your application, including spacing, colors, and typography.

utils This is a great place to put miscellaneous helpers and utilities. Things like date helpers, formatters, etc. are often found here. However, it should only be used for things that are truely shared across your application. If a helper or utility is only used by a specific component or model, consider co-locating your helper with that component or model.

app.tsx This is the entry point to your app. This is where you will find the main App component which renders the rest of the application. This is also where you will specify whether you want to run the app in storybook mode.

./ignite directory

The ignite directory stores all things Ignite, including CLI and boilerplate items. Here you will find generators, plugins and examples to help you get started with React Native.

./storybook directory

This is where your stories will be registered and where the Storybook configs will live

./test directory

This directory will hold your Jest configs and mocks, as well as your storyshots test file. This is a file that contains the snapshots of all your component storybooks.

About The Stack

Why this stack?

If you've used Ignite Andross (the first Ignite stack), you know we formerly used Redux for state management, as does much of the community. However, we encountered some pain points with Redux so went in search of a different solution to meet our needs and landed on mobx-state-tree. We find that it’s a great middle ground between completely structured (like redux) and completely freestyle (like mobx). It brings more than just state-management to the table as well (such as dependency injection, serialization, and lifecycle events).

Some Highlights of MST

MST is...

Intuitive
- With concepts like props and actions, it feels familiar for React developers
- Updating your data means calling functions on objects, rather than dispatching actions.
- Feels similar to relational databases, with concepts like identifiers (primary keys), references (foreign keys), and views (calculated fields)
Streamlined
- No more actionTypes, actionCreators, or reducers
- You don't have to declare your usage intentions with mapStateToProps; they are inferred
- Side-effects are built in; no need for 3rd party libraries like redux-saga, redux-observable, or redux-thunk
- Immutability is built-in - no need for immutable.js or seamless-immutable
- types.compose and model.extend allow for easy code-sharing of common patterns
More than state management
- Lifecycle hooks like afterCreate, preProcessSnapshot, and beforeDestroy let you have control over your data at various points in its lifecycle
- Dependency injection with getEnv allows you to reference your environment (like API or other services)
Performant
- Round-trip store writes are much faster
- Computed values (views) are only calculated when needed
- mobx-react-lite makes React "MobX-aware" and only re-renders when absolutely necessary
Customizable
- MST ships with pre-built middlewares, including one which allows for Redux interoperability. These middlewares can also serve as examples to create your own!

Downsides

We also recognize no state management solution is perfect. MST has some known downfalls:

Integration with TypeScript is clunky at times. MST's own typing system is sometimes at odds with what TypeScript wants
mobx and mobx-state-tree both seem to have "magic" or "sorcery" that makes issues less straightforward to debug because you don't always have a clear picture of what's happening (but using Reactotron, which has mobx-state-tree support built-in, helps a lot). The MobX docs can also help illumitate some of the magic.
The user base is small, so finding help on GitHub or Stack overflow is less convenient (however, the Infinite Red Slack Community, as well as the MobX State Tree Spectrum channel are both very helpful)
Fatal errors are sometimes too-easily triggered and error messages can be verbose and hard to grok
The API has a large surface area and the docs tend to be technical and unfriendly

Learning MobX State Tree

MobX and MobX State Tree can be a lot to learn if you're coming from Redux, so here are a few of our favorite resources to learn the basics:

Be sure to check out the official Getting Started guide for MobX State Tree.
There is also a free egghead.io course.
For a great explanation and walkthrough of the basics, check out State Management with MobX State Tree by React Native Training.
And for more in-depth reading, the official documentation is a great resource.
The official docs for MobX are another important resource, since MST is built on MobX.
For help from real people in the community, make sure to check out the Infinite Red Community Slack as well as the MobX State Tree spectrum channel.
To see example code bases using Bowser (and MST), check out these repositories:
https://github.com/jamonholmgren/PlayerPopularity (simple implementation)
https://github.com/jamonholmgren/TrailBlazers (simple implementation with hooks)
https://github.com/infinitered/ChainReactApp2019 (more in-depth implementation)

Upgrade

To keep your React Native app updated:

React Native Upgrade Helper great web based tool
rn-diff-purge

To keep your Ignite Bowser based app updated:

ignite-bowser-difff-purge To help you see the diffs between versions

TypeScript

In addition to redux --> mobx-state-tree, we've also transitioned to using TypeScript vs plain JavaScript. We find that TypeScript streamlines the developer experience by catching errors before you hit refresh on that simulator, and prevents costly bugs by enforcing type safety.

In Bowser, TypeScript is fully set up, so if you know TS, all you need to do is start coding!

Resources

If you are new to TypeScript, here are some of our favorite resources:

TypeScript in 5 minutes for a quick read
TypeScript in 50 minutes for a longer watch
Execute Program -- TypeScript course -- free course by Gary Bernhardt
TypeScript and VSCode for awesome developer tools
Official Docs

Previous Boilerplates

Premium Support

Ignite CLI, Ignite Andross, and Ignite Bowser, as open source projects, are free to use and always will be. Infinite Red offers premium Ignite CLI support and general mobile app design/development services. Email us at [email protected] to get in touch with us for more details.

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