Building WordPress Plugins with React.js

Let build UI for our WordPress Plugin with ReactJS.

First we need to generate a package.json file. Open your terminal and run:

>npm init

Once the package.json has been generated, we can begin installing our dependencies.

Run these commands sequentially:

>npm install --save react

>npm install --save react-dom

Before React code can run in the browser, it must go through a transformation by compiling JSX into vanilla JavaScript.

Installing Babel

We are installing babel as a dev dependency:

>npm install --save-dev babel-core

We are also required to install two babel-related modules, named babel-loader and babel-preset-react.

>npm install --save-dev babel-loader

>npm install --save-dev babel-preset-react

All done.

Configuration

Create a file .babelrc and add { presets: [‘react’] }

Webpack

Lastly we need to install webpack and two modules webpack-dev-server and html-webpack-plugin.

>npm install --save-dev webpack

>npm install --save-dev webpack-dev-server

>npm install --save-dev html-webpack-plugin

Configure webpack

Create a file webpack.config.js

module.exports = {
    entry: __dirname + '/app/index.js',
    module: {
        loaders: [
            {
                test: /\.js$/,
                exclude: /node_modules/,
                loader: 'babel-loader'
            }
        ]
    },
    output:  {
        filename: 'wp-global-site-tag-admin.js',
        path: __dirname + '/build'
    }
};