learn-react-app

The goal of this tutorial is to quickly get you off the ground with React concepts. This tutorial has hands-on exercises which I consider to be the most important part of this tutorial.

The way this tutorial works is that first, you have to checkout this project on your computer, and run the application locally. Then open the application on a browser and you can go through the tutorial as you like.

Checkout

Checkout the project to your computer using git:

git clone https://github.com/tyroprogrammer/learn-react-app.git

Environment Setup

You can either use npm or yarn to run this application. Please pick one and follow below instructions.

If you want to use yarn and don’t have yarn installed on your local machine please execute below command to install yarn:

npm install -g yarn

Installing Dependencies

On the root directory of the project please execute either one of the below commands to install all the project dependencies. You don’t have to run both commands, just pick one.

yarn install

OR

npm install

Starting application

On the root directory of the project please execute either one of the below commands to start the tutorial application:

yarn start

OR

npm start

After this is complete, the application will be deployed on port 3000. Open a browser and navigate to localhost:3000.

Online Tutorial

You can also run this tutorial in Gitpod, a free online dev environment for GitHub:

Following the tutorial

Tutorials on this application are fairly straightforward to follow. Each tutorial has one or more exercises. You’ll see once you are in the tutorial.

The exercise panel has split view. The left-hand side of the screen has your solution rendered and the right-hand side of the screen has the target solution. Right above the exercise panel, you’ll see the location of exercise files.

Please open the exercise file on your favorite editor (VS Code, Atom, Sublime, IntelliJ etc.) and start making changes by following the instructions. Exercise files are heavily commented. Read through the comments and you should be able to write up the solution. If you have any confusion you can refer to the solution file for that exercise. Every time you make changes to the exercise file and save it, the browser will reload automatically reflecting your changes.

Exercise Comment Guide

Most comments in the exercise files start with one of the below signs. This is to help you understand what you should do to the code immediately following these comments.

🏆 - Trophy - Describes the overall goal of the exercise. You can find this at the top of the exercise file.

💡 - Light Bulb - General information regarding the code immediately following this comment. You might find it throughout the code. No action is required on your part, just read them.

✏️ - Pencil - You are supposed to edit the code immediately following this comment. It is followed by a description of the change that you need to do.

🧭 - Compass - When the description of change is not enough, the compass will give you more direction. You will find it alongside the pencil when more elaborate instruction is deemed necessary.

🚨 - Alarm - This means danger. Read the comment carefully. Usually, it’s used to say you shouldn’t change the code immediately following this. It will create havoc.

FAQ

git checkout HEAD --  exercise/01-helloWorld.js

Contribution

If you went through the exercise and saw some inconsistencies or if you have an idea to make the overall tutorial better please feel free to open a PR.