About this guide
This development guide walks you through everything you need to do to build a high-quality React app integrated with Cloud Firestore and Bootstrap. Check out the tasks below to get started. To save time, you can also use our boilerplate, which gives you a complete React codebase with all of these tasks done for you. Okay, let's dive in!
Tasks
Setup your React app
Setup a React app usingnpx create-react-app
and routing using React Router. There are many ways you can structure your app, but a common setup is to have anApp
component that defines top-level routes, with each route component imported from the/pages
directory. The rest of your components should be located in your/components
directory. You can then run your app locally with thenpm run start
command.Create Cloud Firestore query hooks
Create React hooks that wrap your Cloud Firestore queries, such asuseUser
,useItem
, anduseItemsByUser
. These hooks should subscribe to data usingonSnapshot
and return a query status of "success", "loading", or "error". The React Query library makes it especially easy to setup these hooks and have components re-render when data changes.Add Firestore rules
Be sure to specify your Firestore security rules so that your Firestore database is secure. For example, if you have ausers
collection you might ensure that the authenticated user can only update a doc ifuserDoc.uid
matches theiruid
. If you have anitems
collection you might ensure that they can only update and fetch items whereitemDoc.owner
matches theiruid
. You'll also generally want to specify an array of fields that are writeable, as you wouldn't want a user to be able to changeuserDoc.planId
without actually upgrading their plan.Build a data-driven UI
Create a data-driven UI using Bootstrap components that reads/writes data to Cloud Firestore. The specifics will depend on the type of app you're building, but we generally recommend having auseItemsByOwner
hook that fetches "items" in Cloud Firestore that are owned by the current user. You can then create a component for displaying that data in a simple list or table if more columns are needed. Finally, you'll want create a flow for creating and updating items utilizing Bootstrap modal and form components.Ensure Bootstrap link components hook into React Router
Make all Bootstrap link components hook into React Router by wrapping them with theLinkContainer
component from thereact-router-bootstrap
library.Create a persistent layout
Add any components that you'd like displayed across all pages (such asNavbar
andFooter
) to yourApp
component. If you need multiple persistent layouts you can instead have each page define its own layout. In that case, create multiple layout components (such asLandingPageLayout
andAdminLayout
) and wrap the contents of each page.Build out the rest of your UI using Bootstrap components and composing them into high-level page sections, such as Finish your app UI with Bootstrap
HeroSection
andAccountSettings
. Use SASS stylesheets for styling your components and overriding default component styles. You can scope each stylesheet to a single component using BEM syntax or CSS Modules.You should find our library of pre-built Bootstrap components to be helpful.
Get the code
You can get the code for this guide with our React, Cloud Firestore, and Bootstrap Boilerplate. You'll get a complete React codebase with Cloud Firestore and Bootstrap integration, all the tasks listed above done for you, and a responsive multi-page template. It should save you about two weeks of development time.
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