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Folder Structure

Please note

While this gist has been shared and followed for years, I regret not giving more background. It was originally a gist for the engineering org I was in, not a "general suggestion" for any React app.

Typically I avoid folders altogether. Heck, I even avoid new files. If I can build an app with one 2000 line file I will. New files and folders are a pain.

But when you're in a decently large organization where different development teams work within pretty well-defined feature boundaries of an application, I like the following approach but I would keep the feature folders flat, no route nesting.

Also, don't you dare throw this at your eng team and be like "this is the way". Make up your own minds and don't use me as some weird appeal to authority, I'm just an average dev like anybody else.

Motivations

  • Clear feature ownership
  • Module usage predictibility (refactoring, maintainence, you know what's shared, what's not, prevents accidental regressions, avoids huge directories of not-actually-reusable modules, etc)
  • CI runs only the tests that matter (future)
  • Code splitting (future)

How it works

The file structure maps directly to the route hierarchy, which maps directly to the UI hierarchy.

It's inverted from the model that we've used in other systems. If we consider all folders being either a "generic" or a "feature" folder, we only have one "feature" folder but many "generic" folders.

Examples of "feature" folders:

  • Surveys
  • Admin
  • Users
  • Author

Examples of "generic" folders:

  • components
  • helpers
  • stores
  • actions

Given this route config:

var routes = (
  <Route name="App">
    <Route name="Admin">
      <Route name="Users"/>
      <Route name="Reports"/>
    </Route>
    <Route name="Course">
      <Route name="Assignments"/>
    </Route>
  </Route>
);

We would now set up our directories like this:

app
└── screens
    └── App
        └── screens
            ├── Admin
            │   └── screens
            │       ├── Reports
            │       └── Users
            └── Course
                └── screens
                    └── Assignments

Next, each of these screens has an index.js file, which is the file that handles the entry into the screen, also known as a "Route Handler" in react router. Its very much like a Route in Ember. We'll also have some top-level application bootstrapping stuff at the root, like config/routes.js.

app
├── config
│   └── routes.js
├── screens
│   └── App
│       ├── screens
│       │   ├── Admin
│       │   │   ├── screens
│       │   │   │   ├── Reports
│       │   │   │   │   └── index.js
│       │   │   │   └── Users
│       │   │   │       └── index.js
│       │   │   └── index.js
│       │   └── Course
│       │       ├── screens
│       │       │   └── Assignments
│       │       │       └── index.js
│       │       └── index.js
│       └── index.js
└── index.js

With this structure, each screen has its own directory to hold its modules. In other words, we've introduced "scope" into our application file structure.

Each will probably have a components directory.

app
├── config
│   └── routes.js
├── screens
│   └── App
│       ├── components
│       ├── screens
│       │   ├── Admin
│       │   │   ├── components
│       │   │   ├── screens
│       │   │   │   ├── Reports
│       │   │   │   │   ├── components
│       │   │   │   │   └── index.js
│       │   │   │   └── Users
│       │   │   │       ├── components
│       │   │   │       └── index.js
│       │   │   └── index.js
│       │   └── Course
│       │       ├── components
│       │       ├── screens
│       │       │   └── Assignments
│       │       │       ├── components
│       │       │       └── index.js
│       │       └── index.js
│       └── index.js
└── index.js

These components are used only in the current screen, not even the child screens. So what about when you've got some shared components between screens?

Shared Modules

Every screen also has a "shared" generic directory. If its children share any components with each other or the parent, we put the shared code in "shared". Here is our growing app with some new shared, and not shared modules.

app
├── config
│   └── routes.js
├── screens
│   └── App
│       ├── components
│       ├── screens
│       │   ├── Admin
│       │   │   ├── components
│       │   │   ├── screens
│       │   │   │   ├── Reports
│       │   │   │   │   ├── components
│       │   │   │   │   ├── stores
│       │   │   │   │   │   └── ReportsStore.js
│       │   │   │   │   └── index.js
│       │   │   │   └── Users
│       │   │   │       ├── components
│       │   │   │       └── index.js
│       │   │   ├── shared
│       │   │   │   └── stores
│       │   │   │       ├── AccountStore.js
│       │   │   │       └── UserStore.js
│       │   │   └── index.js
│       │   └── Course
│       │       ├── components
│       │       ├── screens
│       │       │   └── Assignments
│       │       │       ├── components
│       │       │       └── index.js
│       │       └── index.js
│       ├── shared
│       │   └── components
│       │       ├── Avatar.js
│       │       └── Icon.js
│       └── index.js
├── shared
│   └── util
│       └── createStore.js
└── index.js

Note Admin/shared; Reports and Users can both access the shared stores. Additionally, every screen in the app can use Avatar.js and Icon.js.

We put shared components in the nearest shared directory possible and move it toward the root as needed.

Shared module resolution

The way modules in CommonJS are resolved is pretty straightforward in practice: its all relative from the current file.

There is one piece of "magic" in the way modules resolve. When you do a non-relative require like require('moment') the resolver will first try to find it in node_modules/moment. If its not there, it will look in ../node_modules/moment, and on up the tree until it finds it.

We've made it so that shared resolves the same way with webpack modulesDirectories. This way you don't have to require('../../../../../../../../../../shared/Avatar') you can simply do require('components/Avatar') no matter where you are.

Tests

Tests live next to the modules they test. Tests for shared/util/createStore.js live in shared/util/__tests__/createStore.test.js.

Now our app has a bunch of __tests__ directories:

app
├── __tests__
├── config
│   └── routes.js
├── screens
│   └── App
│       ├── components
│       │   ├── __tests__
│       │   │   └── AppView.test.js
│       │   └── AppView.js

... etc.

├── shared
│   └── util
│       ├── __tests__
│       │   └── createStore.test.js
│       └── createStore.js
└── index.js

Why "Screens"?

The other option is "views", which has become a lot like "controller". What does it even mean? Screen seems pretty intuitive to me to mean "a specific screen in the app" and not something that is shared. It has the added benefit that there's no such thing as an "MSC" yet, so the word "screen" causes people to ask "what's a screen?" instead of assuming they know what a "view" is supposed to be.

@tarang9211
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Hi guys, is there an example for the folder structure? I am a little confused.

@gnapse
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gnapse commented Jul 26, 2018

This is great, but unfortunately it would break an editor's ability to track what you're importing and from where. vscode for instance is able to give you useful feedback because it "understands" javascript imports, and gives you auto-complete. Even more so if using TypeScript. Is this configuration something that an editor like that would pick up too?

@coderitual
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@ryanflorence

Hey! Are you still using this approach for current projects? It looks nice but I'm wondering if you have applied some modifications maybe.
Cheers!

@yssong119
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It's great. I am applying this approach to my project. Thanks.

@malamoney
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So it seems @ryanflorence abandoned this thread a while back. Several people asking to see an example application using the structure, but I have not seen one provided. Would love to see this in action. Anyone still using this approach?

@seongjin605
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thank you.
i am using nuxt-js.
great structure :)

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