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Dhairya Nadapara
Dhairya Nadapara

Posted on • Edited on

React with web assembly setup without CRA

#react #webassembly #rust #javascript

Hey everyone, I was curious about the wasm from the last few years because of rust-lang. I have started to learn rust for a long time and I was looking for using it somewhere for learning purposes. As I have most of the work in javascript and react, I was looking if I can do something in the same domain.
I searched about the use-cases and found out that it can be used as a web binary. I have tried some blogs but usually found it with vanilla js or react using rewire to update the webpack. I want to do something basic with a custom setup.
I have tried to create the steps to create the custom setup for React + Wasm using webpack. Hope it will help you. Happy Coding.

Source code: https://github.com/dhairyanadapara/react-wasm-boilerplate

Directory setup

Let's first start with basic thing which are required. We will create the directory and setup version control and JS package manager.

Create new dir 

mkdir react-wasn-tutorial && cd react-wasn-tutorial
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Init npm

I have used npm as package manager

npm init
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Init git

I have used git for version control.

git init
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React and Webpack Setup

Now our directory is setup is completed with package manager and version control. Let's start with React setup first and then we will move to Webpack. We will add basic dependencies for react and webpack

Install react dependencies 

npm install react react-dom --save
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Setup HTML boilerplate

Create public directory in root and create index.html inside. It should have one div with "root" id as default id for react root. If you want you can have other name but you will have to use same name in react root.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
  <head>
    <title>My React Configuration Setup</title>
  </head>
  <body>
    <div id="root"></div>
  </body>
</html>
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Create root component

If you have used CRA you might have know that all the files and components are written inside src directory. We will do the same. Create src directory and create out root file index.jsx

mkdir src && cd src && touch index.js
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Create react component

Create react component in root file

import React from 'react';
import ReactDOM from 'react-dom';

class Welcome extends React.Component {
  render() {
    return <h1>Hello World from React boilerplate</h1>;
  }
}
ReactDOM.render(<Welcome />, document.getElementById('root'));
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Configure webpack 5

Now we will setup the webpack to create build and run the application. First we will install dependencies for webpack and babel.

npm install --save-dev webpack webpack-dev-server webpack-cli
npm install --save-dev @babel/core @babel/preset-env @babel/preset-react babel-loader @babel/runtime @babel/plugin-transform-runtime
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Create webpack.config.js

Create webpack.config.json. We will add few configuration in file.

  • entry - It's the entry point to JS files for building the build.
  • output - It the output directory for build and build name
  • devServer - settings for running dev server
  • modules - rules for transcompiling the JS to ES2015 for browser compatibility 
const path = require('path');

module.exports = {
  entry: './src/index.js',
  output: {
    path: path.resolve(__dirname, 'build'),
    publicPath: '/',
    filename: 'bundle.js',
  },
  devServer: {
    static: './build',
  },
  module: {
    rules: [
      {
        test: /\.(js|jsx)$/,
        exclude: /node_modules/,
        use: ['babel-loader'],
      },
    ],
  },
};
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Create .babelrc

Babel is a toolchain that is mainly used to convert ECMAScript 2015+ code into a backwards compatible version of JavaScript in current and older browsers or environments.

Create configuration for babel in root directory

{
  "presets": ["@babel/preset-env", "@babel/preset-react"],
  "plugins": [["@babel/transform-runtime"]]
}
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Update package.json script to run the project

Add script for running the webpack with npm script

"scripts": {
    "start": "webpack serve --mode development --hot",
}
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Add eslint and prettier dependencies

Install and Configure Prettier 

npm install --save-dev --save-exact prettier
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Create .prettierrc 

{
  "semi": true,
  "singleQuote": true,
  "trailingComma": "es5"
}
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Add script in package.json 

"scripts": {
 "format": "prettier --write \"src/**/*.js\""
},
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Add source map for debugging 

// webpack.config.js
module.exports = {
  devtool: 'inline-source-map',
  // … the rest of the config
};
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Setting ESLint 

npm --save-dev install eslint eslint-loader babel-eslint eslint-config-react eslint-plugin-react
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Update webpack 

module.exports = {
  // modify the module
  module: {
    rules: [
      {
        test: /\.(js|jsx)$/,
        exclude: /node_modules/,
        use: ['babel-loader', 'eslint-loader'], // include eslint-loader
      },
    ],
  },
};
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Create .eslintrc 

{
  "parser": "babel-eslint",
  "extends": "react",
  "env": {
    "browser": true,
    "node": true
  },
  "settings": {
    "react": {
      "version": "detect"
    }
  },
  "rules": {
    "space-before-function-paren": ["off", "always"]
  }
}
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Update package.json scripts 

"scripts": {
  "eslint-fix": "eslint --fix \"src/**/*.js\"",
  "build": "webpack --mode production",
  "watch": "webpack --watch --mode development",
},
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Add html-webpack-plugin 

npm install html-webpack-plugin --save-dev
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const path = require('path');
const HtmlWebpackPlugin = require('html-webpack-plugin');
module.exports = {
  entry: //…
  output: {
    //…
  },
  devServer: {
    static: "./build",
  },
  module: {
    //…
  },
  plugins: [
    new HtmlWebpackPlugin({
      template: path.resolve('./public/index.html'),
    }),
  ]
};
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Configure css 

npm install --save-dev css-loader style-loader
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Update webpack configuration 

module.exports = {
    ...
    module: {
        rules: [
            {
                test: /\.(js|jsx)$/,
                exclude: [/node_modules/, /build/],
                use: ['babel-loader', 'eslint-loader']
            },
            {
                test: /\.css$/,
                use: [
                    'style-loader',
                    'css-loader'
                ]
            }
        ]
    },
    ...
};
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create and import css to file 

touch src/main.css
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body {
    background: red;
}
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import React from 'react';
import ReactDOM from 'react-dom';
import './main.css';

...
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Run build 

npm run build
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For hot reloading run 2 command in different terminals 

npm run start
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npm watch
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Create Rust library 

cargo new --lib wasm-lib --vcs none --edition 2018
cd wasm-lib
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You will find some tests in lib.rs

#[cfg(test)]
mod tests {
    #[test]
    fn it_works() {
        assert_eq!(2 + 2, 4);
    }
}
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Let remove the test code and write some code.

First import the wasm-bindgen. It's required for communication between rust and JS

use wasm_bindgen::prelude::*;
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Now we will try to execute the JS alert from rust library. extern statement tells Rust that we want to call some externally defined functions.

Add public function named greet, which is exposed to Javascript. Add alert with Hello world string.

#[wasm_bindgen]
extern {
    pub fn alert(s: &str);
}

#[wasm_bindgen]
pub fn greet(name: &str) {
    alert(&format!("Hello, {}!", name));
}
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We have written the code but adding dependencies to Cargo.toml is still required. Update the Cargo.toml with required keys

[package]
name = "wasm-lib"
version = "0.1.0"
authors = ["Your Name <you@example.com>"]
description = "A sample project with wasm-pack"
license = "MIT/Apache-2.0"
repository = "https://github.com/yourgithubusername/wasm-lib"
edition = "2018"

[lib]
crate-type = ["cdylib"]

[dependencies]
wasm-bindgen = "0.2"
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For more info you can refer this article
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/WebAssembly/Rust_to_wasm

Build the package 

wasm-pack build --target bundler --out-dir ../build
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Add the command to package.json

 "scripts": {
    "test": "echo \"Error: no test specified\" && exit 1",
    "watch": "webpack --watch --mode development",
    "start": "webpack serve --mode development --hot",
    "format": "prettier --write \"src/**/*.js\"",
    "eslint-fix": "eslint --fix \"src/**/*.js\"",
    "build": "webpack --mode production",
    "build:wasm": "cd wasm-lib && wasm-pack build --target bundler --out-dir ../node_modules"
  },
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Import and use wasm package 

import React from 'react';
import * as wasm from 'wasm_lib';

class Welcome extends React.Component {
  componentDidMount() {
    wasm.greet('Hello World');
  }

  render() {
    return (
      <div className="container">
        <h1 className="test">Hello World from React boilerplate</h1>
        <h2 className="test1">Dhairya Nadapara</h2>
      </div>
    );
  }
}

export default Welcome;
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Enable experimental features in webpack 

module.exports = {
    ...
    experiments: {
        executeModule: true,
        outputModule: true,
        syncWebAssembly: true,
        topLevelAwait: true,
        asyncWebAssembly: true,
        layers: true,
        lazyCompilation: true
    }
};
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Restart the server. Popup will be shown on load

To run the app execute:

1. npm run build:wasm(In case you want to build lib again)
2. npm run watch
3. npm run start
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Note:
This is not the perfect setup for the production app. There are many changes required. I will try to improve this overtime and will update you with new post :)

Reference:

Top comments (4)

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fallenstedt profile image
Alex Fallenstedt •

I made something very similar a while ago. Glad to see the momentum going :)

twitter.com/Fallenstedt/status/133...

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dhairyanadapara profile image
Dhairya Nadapara •

Yes @fallenstedt , I believe this is the next big thing as apps are moving from native to browser. I have seen you repo when I was looking for basic boilerplate. I suggest if you can add more details in README.md, it will be very helpful to people as they can understand and customize the setup based on their requirements.

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harshmakadia profile image
Harsh Makadia •

Nice article Dhairya!

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dhairyanadapara profile image
Dhairya Nadapara •

Thanks @harshmakadia :)

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