What is the Fastest Way to Create a React library?

So you are a React developer, and you've got a wonderful idea 💡, which you want to share with the React open-source universe? The challenge starts when you search for templates or any other bootstrapping tools for this goal.

Site and app developers have a variety of choices: Next.js, Gatsby, and Electron. But we, library devs, are getting almost none of this.

From my experience developing an internal design library for a huge e-commerce company, I came up with a list of features React library setup has to support:

• CommonJS and ES Modules bundling;
• Typescript support and proper declaration emitting;
• Various style architectures support (CSS modules, Styled Components, Tailwind etc.);
• Automated code quality checks for code and style;
• Unit testing;
• Documentation and component playground tool — Storybook;
• CI/CD setup to check PRs and do releases.

This set of features covers such use cases from creating a small hook package to maintaining a huge React components design library. So that's how I came up with the React Library Template.

React Library Template — is a repository that contains all required bootstrap configurations to quickstart library development using the most modern tools. You don't have to spend hours configuring and fixing various problems, just clone the repo and start creating.

Set up

You need to have Node >=18.x and pnpm installed. I've chosen pnpm because it works multiple times faster than yarn.

The easiest way to install pnpm is to run this command:

corepack prepare pnpm@latest --activate

Then you can manually clone the repo or use degit

git clone [email protected]:morewings/react-library-template.git my-lybrary
# or
npx degit https://github.com/morewings/react-library-template my-library
# then 
cd ./my-library
pnpm i

You can also use GitHub templates functionality.

Development

The library code is inside ./src/lib folder. ./src/lib/index.ts is used as an entry point for bundling (more on this later).

For small and simple modules, you can develop using only vite hot reload functionality. Run pnpm run dev in the project, and you will be able to see your changes live in the browser: http://localhost:5173/

You change this development environment at ./src/env/App/App.tsx. Imports from ./src/env/ folder are forbidden in the ./src/lib/ folder.

For bigger and more complex packages like design libraries, you can use Storybook to have a live preview.

1. Create a component skeleton with Storybook story files. There is a working example in ./src/lib/CounterDemo.

2. Run Storybook in development mode: pnpm run start:docs

3. Navigate to the component preview page, e.g., http://localhost:6006/iframe.html?args=&id=example-counter--example-counter&viewMode=story

   
   

In both cases, you will be able to see and debug your changes live in browser without page reload.

Styling

By default, the template is equipped with CSS Modules architecture. It allows your component styles to have unique CSS class names, thus reducing the risk of collisions.

import classes from './Component.module.css';
//...
const Component = () => {
    return <div className={classes.wrapper}>{/*...*/}</div>
}

Style processing is done with postcss package. Configuration is available at ./vite.config.ts file.

import {defineConfig} from 'vite';
import postcssPresetEnv from 'postcss-preset-env';

// https://vitejs.dev/config/
export default defineConfig({
  // Here you can extend postcss configuration
  css: {
    postcss: {
      plugins: [
        postcssPresetEnv({}), // add options if needed
      ],
    },
  },
});

Styled components and Tailwind examples will be added soon.

Bundle

Vite is used to bundle the package. It was chosen because of the speed and wide compatibility (browser HMR and decent Rollup build).

Run pnpm run build to get your code compiled to dist folder.

There are two different bundles created:

• ./dist/index.umd.cjs contains UMD for older set-ups.
• ./dist/index.js contains ES Modules bundle which supports tree-shaking and other fancy features.

Rolled-up type definitions are bundled to ./dist/index.d.ts. And styles to ./dist/style.css.

Here is corresponding ./package.json config:

{
  //...
  "type": "module",
  "files": ["dist", "README.md"],
  "main": "./dist/index.umd.cjs",
  "module": "./dist/index.js",
  "types": "./dist/index.d.ts",
  "sideEffects": false,
  "exports": {
    ".": {
      "import": "./dist/index.js",
      "require": "./dist/index.umd.cjs"
    }
  }
  //...
}

Unit testing

You can write unit tests using Jest and React Testing Library. Example tests are available here: ./src/lib/CounterDemo/Counter.spec.tsx. The test configuration is done in ./jest.config.ts and ./src/setupTests.ts files.

# runs unit tests in dev mode
pnpm run test --watch

Automated code quality checks

Code quality is important for any library. In the template, we have set checks using ESLint, Stylelint and type compliance check.

ESLint

ESLint checks are available using these commands:

# checks code and emits errors and warning
pnpm run lint:code

# checks code and also tries to fix errors
pnpm run fix:code

You can see linter configuration at ./.eslintrc.cjs.

Stylelint

Stylelint checks are available using these commands:

# checks style files and emits errors and warning
pnpm run lint:style

# checks style and also tries to fix errors
pnpm run fix:style

You can see linter configuration at ./.stylelintrc.

Types

You can check types using this command:

# checks project for type errors
pnpm run lint:types

Commit hooks

The template has husky (./.husky/) and lint-staged (./.lintstagedrc) configs included. Thus, each file you commit is checked by the corresponding linter. Also, we run unit tests before push.

CI/CD

./.github/workflows/pull-request-jobs.yml is responsible for pull requests checks. This flow runs every time you open PR to master branch.

./.github/workflows/pages.yml is responsible for the deployment of your Storybook to Gitlab pages. It runs when you add commits to master branch. You have to set up the repository accordingly to make it work. The action expects Storybook pages to be built into ./storybook-static folder.

# builds Storybook
pnpm run build:docs

.github/workflows/merge-jobs.yml is responsible for package publication. Runs onmaster branch.

Releasing your changes

Don't forget to change the package name in ./package.json

{
  "name": "your-library-name",
  "homepage": "your-home-page",
  "private": false,
 //...
}

JS-DevTools/npm-publish GitHub action is responsible for changes release. To set up this action, you need to obtain an access token from the NPM registry. And save it as a repository secret under the name NPM_TOKEN.

To release, you have to run this command on master branch:

# patch => 0.0.x
# minor => 0.x.0
# major => x.0.0
pnpm version patch|minor|major

Then push your changes to GitHub.

Congrats, your contribution is done.