How To Install React Js In Visual Studio Code
Gabelo Clancy
We'll be using the create-react-app generator for this tutorial. To use the generator as well as run the React application server, you'll need Node.js JavaScript runtime and npm (Node.js package manager) installed. npm is included with Node.js which you can download and install from Node.js downloads.
Note: If you've previously installed create-react-app globally via npm install -g create-react-app, we recommend you uninstall the package using npm uninstall -g create-react-app to ensure that npx always uses the latest version.
Now expand the src folder and select the index.js file. You'll notice that VS Code has syntax highlighting for the various source code elements and, if you put the cursor on a parenthesis, the matching bracket is also selected.
VS Code uses the TypeScript language service for its JavaScript code intelligence and it has a feature called Automatic Type Acquisition (ATA). ATA pulls down the npm Type Declaration files (*.d.ts) for the npm modules referenced in the package.json.
Tip: VS Code supports Auto Save, which by default saves your files after a delay. Check the Auto Save option in the File menu to turn on Auto Save or directly configure the files.autoSave user setting.
Ensure that your development server is running (npm start). Then press F5 or the green arrow to launch the debugger and open a new browser instance. The source code where the breakpoint is set runs on startup before the debugger was attached, so we won't hit the breakpoint until we refresh the web page. Refresh the page and you should hit your breakpoint.
If you are using webpack together with your React app, you can have a more efficient workflow by taking advantage of webpack's HMR mechanism which enables you to have live editing and debugging directly from VS Code. You can learn more in this Live edit and debug your React apps directly from VS Code blog post and the webpack Hot Module Replacement documentation.
Linters can provide more sophisticated analysis, enforcing coding conventions and detecting anti-patterns. A popular JavaScript linter is ESLint. ESLint, when combined with the ESLint VS Code extension, provides a great in-product linting experience.
The command will prompt you to answer a series of questions in the Terminal panel. Take the defaults, and it will create a .eslintrc.js file in your project root that looks something like this:
This is a sample React application, which creates a simple TODO application and includes the source code for a Node.js Express server. It also shows how to use the Babel ES6 transpiler and then use webpack to bundle the site assets.
Angular is another popular web framework. If you'd like to see an example of Angular working with VS Code, check out the Debugging with Angular CLI recipe. It will walk you through creating an Angular application and configuring the launch.json file for the JavaScript debugger.
You have to install Node first because React.js is a JavaScript library, and Node.js is a JavaScript runtime environment that allows you to run JavaScript on the server side. So when you're writing React, you include JavaScript functions in your React project, and then Node.js helps run this JavaScript code on the web page.
Node.js has various versions. The recommended version is the latest stable version, as it contains major and significant changes. These changes includes bug fixes and security updates, compatibility with your project dependencies, and so on.
Once installation is complete, open your command prompt to confirm that Node has been successfully installed. Type in node -v in your command prompt, then click the enter button. This command should display the current version of Node installed on your computer.
In the documents directory (or wherever you're creating your project), create a folder that you will be using to create your React app. Type mkdir [folder name]then navigate to the newly created directory using cd [newly created folder name].
In the newly created folder directory, type in npx create-react-app [project name of your choice], and then wait until your React project is completely created. The final section should have the text in the image below displayed:
Recently, create-react-app has become deprecated and the React team doesn't recommend using it anymore. Other modern tools provide a faster front-end development experience, and and you can use them to create React apps without stress. Such tools include Vite, Snowpack, Gatsby, Next.js, Percel, and so on.
Vite is a very fast and customizable modern tool that aims to provide a linear development experience for modern web projects. You can use it to create your React apps in a fast and reliable way. It also has the same features as create-react-app (CRA).
Just as we did when installing React using CRA, the first step is to make sure you have Node installed on your computer. After that, navigate to the directory you want to use and create a new folder (with any name of your choice).
Last but not least, install the Node module folder by typing npm install in the terminal. This takes a little time to complete, but when installation is done, you should see the node_module folder at the top, like this:
The React library is a powerful open-source JavaScript tool you can use to create dynamic and appealing applications. It is actually a fun framework to get your hands on, so I recommend trying it out.
TLDR: Explore 7 Visual Studio Code extensions tailored for React developers and discover how these extensions enhance productivity and efficiency in React app development. Installation instructions and key features are included to help elevate your overall developer experience.
ES7+ React/Redux/React-Native snippets is one of the most used extensions by React and React Native developers. It provides many shorthand prefixes to accelerate development and help developers create code snippets and syntax for React, Redux, GraphQL, and React Native. So, this is a great extension to speed up your development process.
VSCode React Refactor is another VS Code extension designed explicitly for React developers. Refactoring can be challenging when working on big projects. In such situations, you can use VSCode React Refactor to refactor your code quickly, and it will extract pieces of JSX code into new classes, components, and so on. In addition, it supports TypeScript, TSX, regular functions, classes, and arrow functions. More than 1.3 million people have downloaded VSCode React Refactor.
Prettier is an opinionated code formatter used for automatic code formatting. Although this extension is not explicitly designed for React, you can use it to format your React projects and maintain a standard style guide through the entire code base. More than 24 million developers already use the VS Code Prettier extension.
Import Cost is another excellent VS Code extension for React developers. Installing and importing packages is a common and necessary task in React application development. However, there can be performance concerns when importing multiple packages. The Import Cost extension displays the package size as soon as you import the library in the VS Code editor, helping you decide the best installation. It has more than 2 million downloads.
Simple React Snippets is a simple, yet extremely useful VS Code extension for React developers. It provides a set of handpicked React code snippets that you can easily add to your code by typing a few letters. For example, typing imr will import React to your component. Simple React Snippets has more than 2 million downloads.
Stylelint is another styling extension you can use to format style files in your React project. It helps you maintain consistency by identifying and highlighting bad styles and supports different styling types, including pure CSS, SCSS, and LESS CSS. Stylelint has more than 880,000 downloads.
GitLens is another widely used VS Code extension that provides various features related to version control. You can use it to navigate and explore code repositories, view code authorship at a glance, gain insightful information through rich visualization, and more. GitLens has more than 17 million downloads.
This article discussed 7 VS Code extensions you can use to develop React apps more quickly and effectively. However, you should only install these extensions if you require their functionalities. I hope my suggestions will help you to improve your developer experience.
Around here a few of us are really starting to dig working with Visual Studio Code for our JavaScript development. As part of some updates to our React and Friends course, we began looking at tooling again, with an eye toward making it easy for the beginner in React to find syntax errors in JSX code.
Linting, i.e. syntax checking of source code, has been around forever. Linters were originally created when compilation tasks took minutes or hours, as a way to run the syntax checking up front. Eventually interpreted languages came to the fore, and linters became useful tools in build processes, able to spot errors that would normally be caught only at runtime, in the browser.
CareersInstalling ESLint in your NPM BuildThis is the fun part. If you open up your project's package.json file, and add the following item to your scripts section, you can issue a npm run-script lint command (mine is from a project created with Create React App, a great React starter utility):
There are a number of eslint plugins out there, and several are really useful for a project created with the create-react-app starter. Let's install them (if you used eslint --init you might have the react plugin):
Now for the final step: installing ESLint support in Visual Studio Code. Use the Extensions icon (the concentric squares) on the left-hand side of the interface to visit the extensions page. I've installed these extensions on my machine:
The next step is to install a tool called create-react-app using NPM. This tool is used to create react applications easily from our system. You can install this at the system level or temporarily at a folder level. We will install it globally by using the following command.
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