React

How to create an Electron app with React and Electron Forge

Adding React support to the Webpack template doesn't require a complicated boilerplate to get started.

The following guide has been tested with React 18, Babel 7, and Webpack 5.

Create the app and setup the Webpack config

Create the app with the Webpack template. Add the following packages to your devDependencies so that JSX and other React features can be used properly:

npm install --save-dev @babel/core @babel/preset-react babel-loader

Set up the babel-loadermodule with the React preset in webpack.rules.js:

webpack.rules.js

module.exports = [
  // ... existing loader config ...
  {
    test: /\.jsx?$/,
    use: {
      loader: 'babel-loader',
      options: {
        exclude: /node_modules/,
        presets: ['@babel/preset-react']
      }
    }
  }
  // ... existing loader config ...
];

Add the React dependencies

Add the basic React packages to your dependencies:

npm install --save react react-dom

Integrate React code

You should now be able to start writing and using React components in your Electron app. The following is a very minimal example of how to start to add React code:

src/app.jsx

import * as React from 'react';
import { createRoot } from 'react-dom/client';

const root = createRoot(document.body);
root.render(<h2>Hello from React!</h2>);

src/renderer.js

// Add this to the end of the existing file
import './app.jsx';

For more about React, see their documentation.