Facebook's New Open Source Project Helps You Create Apps Easily With React.js

Short Bytes: To make the app creation process in JavaScript much easier, Facebook has launched a new tool called Create React App. This open source tool helps one avoid the tussle of configuring the JavaScript environment and eliminates dependencies. So, if you are into writing JavaScript-based apps, this tool could be of great use to you.

Within a short period of time, Facebook’s React.js library has become a popular way to code native applications for multiple platforms including Windows 10, Android, and iOS. But, this JavaScript framework also involves a good deal of complexities.

Last week, Facebook introduced a new open source project named Create React App. This project was born at a Facebook hackathon and developers can use it to start developing and deploying new JavaScript projects. Making things streamlined, the new tool brings you to the world of command line. It’s interesting to note that Facebook has already offered more than 50 open source projects to the developer community.

The new Create React Apps is basically a combination of three tools — Webpack (asset-building tool), Babel (JS compiler), and ESLint (code-linting tool).

This tool is one of its kind from the house of Facebook when it comes to an app that builds a specific type of JavaScript application. Now, with this tool, developers don’t need to worry much about the configuration files as they just need to take care of a single dependency.

Facebook writes on its blog:

“We take care of updating Babel, ESLint, and Webpack to stable compatible versions so you can update a single dependency to get them all.”

An important point mentioned in the announcement is that Create React App doesn’t lock you down, allowing you to use many other tools of React and JS ecosystem.

While this tool is open source, the decision to provide no configuration options in the tool might upset some people. However, the same open source nature lets you apply any post-customization, once the app completes its configuration.

If you love writing apps in JavaScript, Create React App is an interesting offering. By removing configuration needs and cutting down the dependencies, this tool could prove to be useful for experienced as well as novice developers.

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Also Read: Top 15 Facebook Open Source Projects You Must Know