A boilerplate for React with Express API and Postgres backends for easy development and Heroku deployments.

You can see the boilerplate in action at https://react-express-postgres.herokuapp.com/

What is included

• NPM scripts for local development and Heroku deployments
• Create React App in folder react-ui
• Express API backend with request logging in folder server
• Postgres database access with pg-promise
• Database setup and migration with postgrator
• HTTPS only when deployed to Heroku

Local development

Figure out your connection string to your postgres instance. You'll need it at step 4. Check https://postgresapp.com/ if you want to install Postgres to your Mac.

1. git clone https://github.com/aautio/react-express-postgres-heroku.git
2. cd react-express-postgres-heroku
3. npm install
4. echo DATABASE_URL=postgres://someuser:somepassword@127.0.0.1:5432/somedatabase >> server/.env
5. npm run start:dev

Now you have the Create React App -app running in http://localhost:3000/ and the API server running in http://localhost:4000.

CRA has a fabulous built-in live reload. Go and check their readme. The API server is reloading all changes with nodemon. Whenever the server starts, it executes sql migrations from server/postgrator with Postgrator.

The CRA is proxying requests to API server. Check the proxy config from react-ui/package.json and the relevant section in readme.

Heroku deployments

1. heroku create name-for-your-app
2. heroku addons:create heroku-postgresql:hobby-dev
3. heroku git:remote name-for-your-app
4. git push heroku master

Now you have the software running in https://name-for-your-app.herokuapps.com/. It is running in production mode. Open your browser and check the logs with heroku logs.

Your database has been initialized by running sql migrations from server/postgrator.