Building React Apps with the Nx Standalone Setup

In this tutorial you'll learn how to use React with Nx in a "standalone" (non-monorepo) setup.

What are you going to learn?

  • how to create a new React application
  • how to run a single task (i.e. serve your app) or run multiple tasks in parallel
  • how to leverage code generators to scaffold components
  • how to modularize your codebase and impose architectural constraints for better maintainability
Looking for React monorepos?

Note, this tutorial sets up a repo with a single application at the root level that breaks out its code into libraries to add structure. If you are looking for a React monorepo setup then check out our React monorepo tutorial.

Note, while you could easily use Nx together with your manually set up React application, we're going to use the @nx/react plugin for this tutorial which provides some nice enhancements when working with React. Visit our "Why Nx" page to learn more about plugins and what role they play in the Nx architecture.

Warm Up

Here's the source code of the final result for this tutorial.

Example repository/nrwl/nx-recipes/tree/main/react-standalone

StackBlitz

Open in Stackblitz

Creating a new React App

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Create a new standalone React application with the following command:

~❯

npx create-nx-workspace@latest myreactapp --preset=react-standalone

? Bundler to be used to build the application … Vite [ https://vitejs.dev/ ] Webpack [ https://webpack.js.org/ ] Rspack [ https://www.rspack.dev/ ]

You can choose any bundler you like. In this tutorial we're going to use Vite. The above command generates the following structure:

└─ myreactapp ├─ ... ├─ e2e │ └─ ... ├─ public │ └─ ... ├─ src │ ├─ app │ │ ├─ app.module.css │ │ ├─ app.spec.tsx │ │ ├─ app.tsx │ │ └─ nx-welcome.tsx │ ├─ assets │ ├─ main.tsx │ └─ styles.css ├─ index.html ├─ nx.json ├─ package.json ├─ project.json ├─ tsconfig.app.json ├─ tsconfig.json ├─ tsconfig.spec.json └─ vite.config.ts

The setup includes..

  • a new React application at the root of the Nx workspace (src/app)
  • a Cypress based set of e2e tests (e2e/)
  • Prettier preconfigured
  • ESLint preconfigured
  • Jest preconfigured

Let me explain a couple of things that might be new to you.

FileDescription
nx.jsonThis is where we fine-tune how Nx works. We define what cacheable operations there are, and configure our task pipeline. More on that soon.
project.jsonThis file contains the targets that can be invoked for the myreactapp project. It is like a more evolved version of simple package.json scripts with more metadata attached. You can read more about it here.

Serving the App

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The most common tasks are already mapped in the package.json file:

package.json
{ "name": "reactutorial", "scripts": { "start": "nx serve", "build": "nx build", "test": "nx test" } ... }

To serve your new React application, just run: npm start. Alternatively you can directly use Nx by using

nx serve

Your application should be served at http://localhost:4200.

Nx uses the following syntax to run tasks:

Syntax for Running Tasks in Nx

All targets, such as serve, build, test or your custom ones, are defined in the project.json file.

{ "name": "myreactapp", ... "targets": { "serve": { ... }, "build": { ... }, "preview": { ... }, "test": { ... }, "lint": { ... }, "serve-static": { ... }, }, }
You can also use the package.json

Note that Nx can pick up tasks from both, the package.json as well as the project.json. Read more

Each target contains a configuration object that tells Nx how to run that target.

{ "name": "myreactapp", ... "targets": { "serve": { "executor": "@nx/vite:dev-server", "defaultConfiguration": "development", "options": { "buildTarget": "reactutorial:build" }, "configurations": { "development": { "buildTarget": "reactutorial:build:development", "hmr": true }, "production": { "buildTarget": "reactutorial:build:production", "hmr": false } } }, ... }, }
Nx 15 and lower use @nrwl/ instead of @nx/

The most critical parts are:

  • executor - this is of the syntax <plugin>:<executor-name>, where the plugin is an NPM package containing an Nx Plugin and <executor-name> points to a function that runs the task. In this case, the @nx/vite plugin contains the dev-server executor which serves the React app using Vite.
  • options - these are additional properties and flags passed to the executor function to customize it

Learn more about how to run tasks with Nx.

Testing and Linting - Running Multiple Tasks

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Our current setup doesn't just come with targets for serving and building the React application, but also has targets for unit testing, e2e testing and linting. Again, these are defined in the project.json file. We can use the same syntax as before to run these tasks:

nx test # runs tests using Vitest (or you can configure it to use Jest) nx lint # runs linting with ESLint nx e2e e2e # runs e2e tests with Cypress

More conveniently, we can also run them in parallel using the following syntax:

myreactapp❯

nx run-many -t test lint e2e

✔ nx run e2e:lint (2s) ✔ nx run myreactapp:lint (2s) ✔ nx run myreactapp:test (2s) ✔ nx run e2e:e2e (6s) —————————————————————————————————————————————————————— > NX Successfully ran targets test, lint, e2e for 2 projects (7s)

Caching

One thing to highlight is that Nx is able to cache the tasks you run.

Note that all of these targets are automatically cached by Nx. If you re-run a single one or all of them again, you'll see that the task completes immediately. In addition, (as can be seen in the output example below) there will be a note that a matching cache result was found and therefore the task was not run again.

myreactapp❯

nx run-many -t test lint e2e

✔ nx run e2e:lint [existing outputs match the cache, left as is] ✔ nx run myreactapp:lint [existing outputs match the cache, left as is] ✔ nx run myreactapp:test [existing outputs match the cache, left as is] ✔ nx run e2e:e2e [existing outputs match the cache, left as is] —————————————————————————————————————————————————————— > NX Successfully ran targets test, lint, e2e for 5 projects (54ms) Nx read the output from the cache instead of running the command for 10 out of 10 tasks.

Not all tasks might be cacheable though. You can configure cacheableOperations in the nx.json file. You can also learn more about how caching works.

Nx Plugins? Why?

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One thing you might be curious about is the project.json. You may wonder why we define tasks inside the project.json file instead of using the package.json file with scripts that directly launch Vite.

Nx understands and supports both approaches, allowing you to define targets either in your package.json or project.json files. While both serve a similar purpose, the project.json file can be seen as an advanced form of package.json scripts, providing additional metadata and capabilities. In this tutorial, we utilize the project.json approach primarily because we take advantage of Nx Plugins.

So, what are Nx Plugins? Nx Plugins are optional packages that extend the capabilities of Nx, catering to various specific technologies. For instance, we have plugins tailored to React (e.g., @nx/react), Vite (@nx/vite), Cypress (@nx/cypress), and more. These plugins offer additional features, making your development experience more efficient and enjoyable when working with specific tech stacks.

visit our "Why Nx" page for more deails.

Creating New Components

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You can just create new React components as you normally would. However, Nx plugins usually also ship generators. They allow you to easily scaffold code, configuration or entire projects. To see what capabilities the @nx/react plugin ships, run the following command and inspect the output:

myreactapp❯

npx nx list @nx/react

> NX Capabilities in @nx/react: GENERATORS init : Initialize the `@nrwl/react` plugin. application : Create a React application. library : Create a React library. component : Create a React component. redux : Create a Redux slice for a project. storybook-configuration : Set up storybook for a React app or library. component-story : Generate storybook story for a React component stories : Create stories/specs for all components declared in an app or library. component-cypress-spec : Create a Cypress spec for a UI component that has a story. hook : Create a hook. host : Generate a host react application remote : Generate a remote react application cypress-component-configuration : Setup Cypress component testing for a React project component-test : Generate a Cypress component test for a React component setup-tailwind : Set up Tailwind configuration for a project. setup-ssr : Set up SSR configuration for a project. EXECUTORS/BUILDERS module-federation-dev-server : Serve a host or remote application. module-federation-ssr-dev-server : Serve a host application along with it's known remotes.
Nx 15 and lower use @nrwl/ instead of @nx/
Prefer a more visual UI?

If you prefer a more integrated experience, you can install the "Nx Console" extension for your code editor. It has support for VSCode, IntelliJ and ships a LSP for Vim. Nx Console provides autocompletion support in Nx configuration files and has UIs for browsing and running generators.

More info can be found in the integrate with editors article.

Run the following command to generate a new "hello-world" component. Note how we append --dry-run to first check the output.

myreactapp❯

npx nx g @nx/react:component hello-world --dry-run

> NX Generating @nx/react:component ✔ Should this component be exported in the project? (y/N) · false CREATE src/app/hello-world/hello-world.module.css CREATE src/app/hello-world/hello-world.spec.tsx CREATE src/app/hello-world/hello-world.tsx NOTE: The "dryRun" flag means no changes were made.
Nx 15 and lower use @nrwl/ instead of @nx/

As you can see it generates a new component in the app/hello-world/ folder. If you want to actually run the generator, remove the --dry-run flag.

src/app/hello-world/hello-world.tsx
import styles from './hello-world.module.css'; /* eslint-disable-next-line */ export interface HelloWorldProps {} export function HelloWorld(props: HelloWorldProps) { return ( <div className={styles['container']}> <h1>Welcome to HelloWorld!</h1> </div> ); } export default HelloWorld;

Building the App for Deployment

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If you're ready and want to ship your application, you can build it using

myreactapp❯

npx nx build

vite v4.3.5 building for production... ✓ 33 modules transformed. dist/myreactapp/index.html 0.48 kB │ gzip: 0.30 kB dist/myreactapp/assets/index-e3b0c442.css 0.00 kB │ gzip: 0.02 kB dist/myreactapp/assets/index-378e8124.js 165.64 kB │ gzip: 51.63 kB ✓ built in 496ms —————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————— > NX Successfully ran target build for project reactutorial (1s)

All the required files will be placed in the dist/myreactapp folder and can be deployed to your favorite hosting provider.

You're ready to go!

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In the previous sections you learned about the basics of using Nx, running tasks and navigating an Nx workspace. You're ready to ship features now!

But there's more to learn. You have two possibilities here:

Modularizing your React App with Local Libraries

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When you develop your React application, usually all your logic sits in the app folder. Ideally separated by various folder names which represent your "domains". As your app grows, this becomes more and more monolithic though.

└─ myreactapp ├─ ... ├─ src │ ├─ app │ │ ├─ products │ │ ├─ cart │ │ ├─ ui │ │ ├─ ... │ │ └─ app.tsx │ ├─ ... │ └─ main.tsx ├─ ... ├─ package.json ├─ ...

Nx allows you to separate this logic into "local libraries". The main benefits include

  • better separation of concerns
  • better reusability
  • more explicit "APIs" between your "domain areas"
  • better scalability in CI by enabling independent test/lint/build commands for each library
  • better scalability in your teams by allowing different teams to work on separate libraries

Creating Local Libraries

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Let's assume our domain areas include products, orders and some more generic design system components, called ui. We can generate a new library for each of these areas using the React library generator:

nx g @nx/react:library products --unitTestRunner=vitest --bundler=none --directory=modules nx g @nx/react:library orders --unitTestRunner=vitest --bundler=none --directory=modules nx g @nx/react:library ui --unitTestRunner=vitest --bundler=none --directory=modules/shared
Nx 15 and lower use @nrwl/ instead of @nx/

Note how we use the --directory flag to place the libraries into a subfolder. You can choose whatever folder structure you like, even keep all of them at the root-level.

Running the above commands should lead to the following directory structure:

└─ myreactapp ├─ ... ├─ modules │ ├─ products │ │ ├─ ... │ │ ├─ project.json │ │ ├─ src │ │ │ ├─ index.ts │ │ │ └─ lib │ │ │ ├─ modules-products.spec.ts │ │ │ └─ modules-products.ts │ │ ├─ tsconfig.json │ │ ├─ tsconfig.lib.json │ │ ├─ tsconfig.spec.json │ │ └─ vite.config.ts │ ├─ orders │ │ ├─ ... │ │ ├─ project.json │ │ ├─ src │ │ │ ├─ index.ts │ │ │ └─ ... │ │ └─ ... │ └─ shared │ └─ ui │ ├─ ... │ ├─ project.json │ ├─ src │ │ ├─ index.ts │ │ └─ ... │ └─ ... ├─ src │ ├─ app │ │ ├─ hello-world │ │ │ ├─ hello-world.module.css │ │ │ ├─ hello-world.spec.tsx │ │ │ └─ hello-world.tsx │ │ └─ ... │ ├─ ... │ └─ main.tsx ├─ ...

Each of these libraries

  • has its own project.json file with corresponding targets you can run (e.g. running tests for just orders: nx test modules-orders)
  • has a name based on the --directory flag, e.g. modules-orders; you can find the name in the corresponding project.json file
  • has a dedicated index.ts file which is the "public API" of the library
  • is mapped in the tsconfig.base.json at the root of the workspace

Importing Libraries into the React Application

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All libraries that we generate automatically have aliases created in the root-level tsconfig.base.json.

tsconfig.base.json
{ "compilerOptions": { ... "paths": { "@myreactapp/modules/products": ["modules/products/src/index.ts"], "@myreactapp/modules/orders": ["modules/orders/src/index.ts"], "@myreactapp/modules/shared/ui": ["modules/shared/ui/src/index.ts"] }, ... }, }

Hence we can easily import them into other libraries and our React application. As an example, let's create and expose a ProductList component from our modules/products library. Either create it by hand or run

nx g @nx/react:component product-list --project=modules-products
Nx 15 and lower use @nrwl/ instead of @nx/

We don't need to implement anything fancy as we just want to learn how to import it into our main React application.

modules/products/src/lib/product-list/product-list.tsx
import styles from './product-list.module.css'; /* eslint-disable-next-line */ export interface ProductListProps {} export function ProductList(props: ProductListProps) { return ( <div className={styles['container']}> <h1>Welcome to ProductList!</h1> </div> ); } export default ProductList;

Make sure the ProductList is exported via the index.ts file of our products library. This is our public API with the rest of the workspace. Only export what's really necessary to be usable outside the library itself.

modules/products/src/index.ts
export * from './lib/product-list/product-list';

We're ready to import it into our main application now. First (if you haven't already), let's set up React Router.

npm install react-router-dom

Configure it in the main.tsx.

src/main.tsx
import { StrictMode } from 'react'; import { BrowserRouter } from 'react-router-dom'; import ReactDOM from 'react-dom/client'; import App from './app/app'; const root = ReactDOM.createRoot( document.getElementById('root') as HTMLElement ); root.render( <StrictMode> <BrowserRouter> <App /> </BrowserRouter> </StrictMode> );

Then we can import the ProductList component into our app.tsx and render it via the routing mechanism whenever a user hits the /products route.

src/app/app.tsx
import { Route, Routes } from 'react-router-dom'; // importing the component from the library import { ProductList } from '@myreactapp/modules/products'; function Home() { return <h1>Home</h1>; } export function App() { return ( <Routes> <Route path="/" element={<Home />}></Route> <Route path="/products" element={<ProductList />}></Route> </Routes> ); } export default App;

Serving your app (nx serve) and then navigating to /products should give you the following result:

products route

Let's apply the same for our orders library.

  • generate a new component OrderList in modules/orders and export it in the corresponding index.ts file
  • import it into the app.tsx and render it via the routing mechanism whenever a user hits the /orders route

In the end, your app.tsx should look similar to this:

src/app/app.tsx
import { Route, Routes } from 'react-router-dom'; import { ProductList } from '@myreactapp/modules/products'; import { OrderList } from '@myreactapp/modules/orders'; function Home() { return <h1>Home</h1>; } export function App() { return ( <Routes> <Route path="/" element={<Home />}></Route> <Route path="/products" element={<ProductList />}></Route> <Route path="/orders" element={<OrderList />}></Route> </Routes> ); } export default App;

Visualizing your Project Structure

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Nx automatically detects the dependencies between the various parts of your workspace and builds a project graph. This graph is used by Nx to perform various optimizations such as determining the correct order of execution when running tasks like nx build, identifying affected projects and more. Interestingly you can also visualize it.

Just run:

nx graph

You should be able to see something similar to the following in your browser.

Notice how modules-shared-ui is not yet connected to anything because we didn't import it in any of our projects.

Exercise for you: change the codebase such that modules-shared-ui is used by modules-orders and modules-products. Note: you need to restart the nx graph command to update the graph visualization or run the CLI command with the --watch flag.

Imposing Constraints with Module Boundary Rules

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Once you modularize your codebase you want to make sure that the modules are not coupled to each other in an uncontrolled way. Here are some examples of how we might want to guard our small demo workspace:

  • we might want to allow modules-orders to import from modules-shared-ui but not the other way around
  • we might want to allow modules-orders to import from modules-products but not the other way around
  • we might want to allow all libraries to import the modules-shared-ui components, but not the other way around

When building these kinds of constraints you usually have two dimensions:

  • type of project: what is the type of your library. Example: "feature" library, "utility" library, "data-access" library, "ui" library
  • scope (domain) of the project: what domain area is covered by the project. Example: "orders", "products", "shared" ... this really depends on the type of product you're developing

Nx comes with a generic mechanism that allows you to assign "tags" to projects. "tags" are arbitrary strings you can assign to a project that can be used later when defining boundaries between projects. For example, go to the project.json of your modules-orders library and assign the tags type:feature and scope:orders to it.

modules/orders/project.json
{ ... "tags": ["type:feature", "scope:orders"] }

Then go to the project.json of your modules-products library and assign the tags type:feature and scope:products to it.

modules/products/project.json
{ ... "tags": ["type:feature", "scope:products"] }

Finally, go to the project.json of the modules-shared-ui library and assign the tags type:ui and scope:shared to it.

modules/shared/ui/project.json
{ ... "tags": ["type:ui", "scope:shared"] }

Notice how we assign scope:shared to our UI library because it is intended to be used throughout the workspace.

Next, let's come up with a set of rules based on these tags:

  • type:feature should be able to import from type:feature and type:ui
  • type:ui should only be able to import from type:ui
  • scope:orders should be able to import from scope:orders, scope:shared and scope:products
  • scope:products should be able to import from scope:products and scope:shared

To enforce the rules, Nx ships with a custom ESLint rule. Open the .eslintrc.base.json at the root of the workspace and add the following depConstraints in the @nx/enforce-module-boundaries rule configuration:

.eslintrc.base.json
{ ... "overrides": [ { ... "rules": { "@nx/enforce-module-boundaries": [ "error", { "enforceBuildableLibDependency": true, "allow": [], "depConstraints": [ { "sourceTag": "*", "onlyDependOnLibsWithTags": ["*"] }, { "sourceTag": "type:feature", "onlyDependOnLibsWithTags": ["type:feature", "type:ui"] }, { "sourceTag": "type:ui", "onlyDependOnLibsWithTags": ["type:ui"] }, { "sourceTag": "scope:orders", "onlyDependOnLibsWithTags": [ "scope:orders", "scope:products", "scope:shared" ] }, { "sourceTag": "scope:products", "onlyDependOnLibsWithTags": ["scope:products", "scope:shared"] }, { "sourceTag": "scope:shared", "onlyDependOnLibsWithTags": ["scope:shared"] } ] } ] } }, ... ] }
Nx 15 and lower use @nrwl/ instead of @nx/

To test it, go to your modules/products/src/lib/product-list/product-list.tsx file and import the OrderList from the modules-orders project:

modules/products/src/lib/product-list/product-list.tsx
import styles from './product-list.module.css'; // This import is not allowed 👇 import { OrderList } from '@myreactapp/modules/orders'; /* eslint-disable-next-line */ export interface ProductListProps {} export function ProductList(props: ProductListProps) { return ( <div className={styles['container']}> <h1>Welcome to ProductList!</h1> <OrderList /> </div> ); } export default ProductList;

If you lint your workspace you'll get an error now:

~/workspace❯

nx run-many -t lint

✔ nx run myreactapp:lint [existing outputs match the cache, left as is] ✔ nx run e2e:lint [existing outputs match the cache, left as is] ✔ nx run modules-shared-ui:lint (1s) ✖ nx run modules-products:lint Linting "modules-products"... /Users/.../myreactapp/modules/products/src/lib/product-list/product-list.tsx 3:1 error A project tagged with "scope:products" can only depend on libs tagged with "scope:products", "scope:shared" @nx/enforce-module-boundaries ✖ 1 problem (1 error, 0 warnings) Lint errors found in the listed files. ✔ nx run modules-orders:lint (1s) ———————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————— > NX Ran target lint for 5 projects (1s) ✔ 4/5 succeeded [2 read from cache] ✖ 1/5 targets failed, including the following: - nx run modules-products:lint
Nx 15 and lower use @nrwl/ instead of @nx/

If you have the ESLint plugin installed in your IDE you should immediately see an error:

ESLint module boundary error

Learn more about how to enforce module boundaries.

Next Steps

Here's some more things you can dive into next:

Also, make sure you