The apollo-universal-starter-kit from sachgits

Apollo Universal Starter Kit with back-end & front-end Hot Code Reload

Apollo Universal Starter Kit is a SEO friendly boilerplate for Universal web app development built on top of Apollo, GraphQL, React, Redux, Express with SQL storage support and Twitter Bootstrap integration. Hot Code Reload of back end & front end using Webpack and Hot Module Replacement to reflect your changes instantly and help you stay productive.

Hot Code Reload demo

Getting Started

Clone starter kit locally.

git clone https://github.com/sysgears/apollo-universal-starter-kit.git
cd apollo-universal-starter-kit

Install dependencies.

npm i

yarn

Seed sample database data.

npm run seed

yarn seed

Run starter kit in development mode.

npm run watch

yarn watch

Point your browser to http://localhost:3000
Change any app code and see the changes applied immediately!
Open app in multiple tabs, try to increase counter or add a new post/comment in one tab and then switch to another tab. You will see that counter value and post/comment are updated there as well, because the application is live updated via subscriptions.

Deployment to Production

Deploying to Linux running Node.js

Clone starter kit locally.

git clone https://github.com/sysgears/apollo-universal-starter-kit.git
cd apollo-universal-starter-kit

Install dependencies.

npm i

yarn

Seed production database data.

npm run seed --prod

NODE_ENV=production yarn seed

Compile project.

npm run build

yarn build

Run project in production mode.

node build/server

npm start

yarn start

Deploying to Heroku

Add your app to Heroku
Allow Heroku to install build time dependencies from the devDependencies in package.json: Settings -> Config Variables -> Add, KEY: NPM_CONFIG_PRODUCTION, VALUE: false.
Deploy your app on Heroku

Heroku Demo

You can see latest version of this app deployed to Heroku here: https://apollo-universal-starter-kit.herokuapp.com

Additional scripts

While developing, you will probably rely mostly on npm run watch or yarn watch; however, there are additional scripts at your disposal:

`npm run or yarn <script>`	Description
`watch`	Run your app in develooment mode and watch your changes. Hot code reload will be enabled in development.
`start`	Run your app in production mode.
`build`	Compiles the application to the build folder.
`tests`	Runs unit tests with Mocha.
`tests:watch`	Runs unit tests with Mocha and watches for changes automatically to re-run tests.
`test`	Runs unit tests with Mocha and check for lint errors
`lint`	Check for lint errors and runs for all `.js` and `.jsx` files.
`seed`	Seed sample database using SQLite. Use `--prod` flag to run in "production" mode.
`migrate`	Migrate the sample database
`rollback`	Rollback the sample database to previous state.

Project Structure

The project structure presented in this boilerplate is fractal, where functionality is grouped primarily by feature rather than file type. This structure is only meant to serve as a guide, it is by no means prescriptive. That said, it aims to represent generally accepted guidelines and patterns for building scalable applications.

.
├── src                      # Application source code
│   ├── client               # Fractal route for client side code
│   │   ├── app              # Fractal route for common client application code
│   │   └── modules          # Fractal route for client-side application module splitting (components, containers, GraphQL queries, redux reducers)
│   │   └── styles           # Application-wide styles
│   │   └── test-helpers     # Test helper for apollo client tests
│   │   └── index.jsx        # Render client with hot reload
│   ├── common               # Apollo client, redux store and logging
│   └── server               # Fractal route for server side code
│   │   ├── api              # Initialization of GraphQL schema and subscription.
│   │   └── database         # Fractal route for application module splitting
│   │   │   └── migrations   # Database migration script using Knex
│   │   │   └── seeds        # Database seed script using Knex
│   │   └── middleware       # Graphiql, GraphQL express and SSR rendering
│   │   └── modules          # Fractal route for server-side application module splitting (schema definition, resolvers, sql queries)
│   │   └── sql              # Knex connector
│   │   └── test-helpers     # Test helper for apollo server tests
│   │   └── api_server.js    # GraphQL api server set up
│   │   └── index.js         # Render server with hot reload
└── tools                    # All build related files (Webpack)

Features

Webpack for back end

This starter kit is different from most of the starter kits out there, because it uses Webpack not only for front end, but for back-end code as well. This enables powerful Webpack features for back-end code, such as conditional compilation, embedding non-js files and CSS stylesheets into the code, hot code reload, etc. To use external backend set serverConfig.url at tools/webpack.app_config.js
Hot Code Reload for back end and front end

Hot Code Reload for back end is done using Webpack. When Webpack prepares hot patches on the filesystem, SIGUSR2 signal is sent to Node.js app and embedded Webpack Hot Module Runtime reacts to this signal and applies patches to running modules from filesystem. Hot code reload for front end is using Webpack Dev Server and Hot Module Replacement to apply patches to front-end code. Hot patches for React components are applied on the front end and back end at the same time, so React should not complain about differences in client and server code.
Webpack DLL vendor bundle generation and updating out of the box

For all the non-development dependencies of project package.json the Webpack vendor DLL bundle is generated and updated automatically, so that Webpack didn't process vendor libraries on each change to the project, but only when they are actually changed. This boosts speed of cold project start in development mode and speed of hot code reload even if the number of dependencies is huge.
Server Side Rendering with Apollo Redux Store sync

On the initial web page request back end fully renders UI and hands off Apollo Redux Store state to front end. Frontend then starts off from there and updates itself on user interactions.

If you don't need Server Side Rendering, set package.json ssr field to false
Optimistic UI updates

This example application uses Apollo optimistic UI updates, that result in immediate UI update on user interaction and then, after data arrives from the server, UI state is finalized.
GraphQL API

GraphQL is used as very flexible and much faster API in terms of bandwidth and round-trips, compared to REST. GraphQL requests are batched together automatically by Apollo
GraphQL subscription example

GraphQL subscription is utilized to make counter updating in real-time.
SQL and arbitrary data sources support

Knex code to access SQLite is included as an example of using arbitrary data source with Apollo and GraphQL. NoSQL storage or any other data source can be used the same way.

Debug SQL Prints out execuded queries, with respective times in development mode and can be set in package.json by debugSQL field true
Powerful stylesheets with Hot Reloading

Twitter Bootstrap in form of SASS stylesheets is used for styling demo application. Application has stylesheet in styles.scss for global styling which is Hot Reloaded on change. React components styling is done by Glamor v3.
Babel for ES2017 transpiling
ESLint to enforce proper code style
React Hot Loader v3 for the sake of completeness this project also supports React Hot Loader v3, but it is turned off. By default this starter kit uses pure Webpack HMR for all hot reloading purposes and we think it covers all practical needs during development and using React Hot Loader v3 in addition to Webpack HMR makes hot reloading less predictable and buggy. To turn React Hot Loader v3 on: set reactHotLoader field of package.json to true.
PersistGraphQL Webpack Plugin is a tool to gather static GraphQL queries for GraphQL projects and inject them into build. It will make front end and back end aware of static queries used in the project and will only allow these queries for better security and less bandwidth.
Dataloader for loading comments in post example
GraphQL Cursor Pagination Example of Relay-style cursor pagination
Declarative/dynamic head section, using React Helmet
Google Analytics integration using React GA
Full CRUD funcionality with Subscriptions in post example, with ReduxForm