The first time I built a Laravel React app, most of my time was spent simply building out the infrastructure related to authentication (login, registration, password reset, etc).
With a server rendered app, Laravel generates the authentication boilerplate for you. But with a 100% React frontend, all these pieces need to be built custom: an auth API (with JSON web tokens), routing, forms and form validation, persistent storage, and tests. There’s also aren’t many tutorials or example projects that show how it all works together.
Example To-Do App
Now that I’m more familiar with these concepts, I’ve released an example boilerplate for others to look at. You can view a demo of the Laravel React To Do App here. Source code and installation instructions are available on GitHub.
It includes:
- An auth API, using tymon/jwt-auth to manage the JSON Web Tokens.
- Routing with react-router (private, public and split routes).
- Feature tests.
- Database seeding.
- A base ApiController to help return standardized responses.
- Bootstrap for styling.
You can find the project on GitHub. Use it as a starting base for quick prototypes or to learn from. Suggestions, recommendations, and pull requests welcome! Continue reading