Junior vs Senior React Folder Structure - How To Organize React Projects

[@devinosborne3396]

Can't believe this isn't more documented on the web yet. People need to start talking more about what it looks like to build projects with enterprise level structure :D Great Stuff!

[@joaquin67]

This was my very first concern learning how to make simple apps back in college. Nobody was really able to answer my question and just like you said, it's not documented at all online! It would have sped up my learning so much.

[@joaquin67]

@@pleasejustletmebeanonymous6510 while that may be true, just seeing one example that's thought out and explained is a major help in getting my head wrapped around the bigger picture of the application. It can then help me better understand other projects, regardless of structure. But now I wonder if many projects will have to be re-written with the help of AI lol

[@shenrr6802]

@@pleasejustletmebeanonymous6510 Agreed, but I would like to add that it is the responsibility of leadership and management to work on this, and the devs should be vocal about it.

[@renatolins4670]

This is what I do as a front-end specialist: - domain: This is a suggestive/temporary name that represents the only(and the main) module that the application has. If/when the application scales, new folders like this would be created for each domain, so we could have 'users' (for example) and its components, pages, icons, hooks, etc., and another folder called 'payment' and its components, pages, icons, hooks, etc. It is important to highlight that an application domain can have multiple pages and that those pages will be sub-routes, for example, users/registration, users/permissions, etc - shared: A folder represents code that is used/reused without being tied to any application's rule. This folder is not called 'common' because it does not just hold common code but also has the potential to become a private/internal library - other projects within the same company could be using a versioned flavor of this folder. Regarding the project's structure/organization, this folder is also a container for another folder, so it will hold shared components, models, icons, hooks, etc. So... Pages (and page folders) will not be treated as containers for multiple pieces of code, as this only happens with domain and shared folders. Pages will be treated as normal components, with the difference that they will be rendered when we reach certain routes. That said, components and pages will use the same naming conventions, coding patterns, testing approach, etc

[@patocardo]

As far as my experience allows me to say, I can add the following: 1. the 'junior approach' becomes very problematic as soon as a second programmer start to work on that code. So I would directly jumpt to the second approach 2. The third approach is very near to the hexagonal architecture, which facilitates the ownership of each programmer in a domain, reduce the risk of conflict and makes it cheaper to transfer the domain to another service. At this point, typescript should be used, and a "dto" folder for types should also be added.

[@witmentality5910]

you mean interface? dto is for api

[@BeCurieUs]

One big addtion to consider is a template/transform file structure for API calls. When dealing with mock data and mocking all API functions, having a specific data/API/Mock folder system is super helpful Our rule of thumb is a file per URI so /v1/files GET/POST/PUT would all get its own template transform file (turn BE values to FE values and the reverse), a mock API responce File, and the accociated tests for them. That kind of breakdown makes dealing with the API layer much more tidey.

[@dotnetfullstack3217]

if you have any reference code regarding this can you provide the link please

[@MietekPomywacz]

So you have any reference code regarding this? :D

[@typingturtle5155]

Neat idea! Would love to see a followup on monorepo structure.

[@krumbo]

Yeah mono repo +1. Shows us the structure for a multi tenant app.

[@user-yz5hj3zg2x]

Hi, Kyle! I heard you said once that, before getting your first job, you had researched the companies for which you were going to apply before actually applying to their job offers, so that you could focus your efforts, instead of sending tons of applications, and also make sure you'd end up in a work environment you'd like, and all that payed off in the end. Could you please share how you got informed about the companies' cultures and how did you know they would be a good fit?

[@enjoylife9571]

I did this project without watching it first. I used "startsWith" method instead of "includes" . It sorts words much logically 🙂 Thank you for teaching useful projects

[@florianhundegger]

great video! would love to see a next part on a nodejs / express backend api!

[@august-lemon9244]

yes! please! ive been having trouble with this

[@Nishantkumar-wx9mc]

W

[@recursion.]

ratio plus html / php

[@partiid]

There's no need, just use Nestjs instead

[@raphaeltorsu8655]

same here

[@PrinceRk_]

as always, so clear and well explained. I suggest you to share an actual project (if you can of course) for each type of structure. It would be amazing, I guess a lot of people likes to have an exemple to work with as I do. anyway, just keep going you are amazing ! ha and thanks for the free course :)

[@chickenchoclates1971]

he has shared it's in the description

[@Emerald13]

Video suggestion: best practices for publishing react components as libraries

[@OleksandrBorysenko333]

Yep, folder structure it's important for each project! With your approaches, I can scale my app easily. Great video.

[@PROJECTJMUSIC]

This was extremely helpful! I'm building a rather large project and couldn't think of a clever way to structure my files. As I'm still at the start it'll be quite easy to apply your method of folder structuring.

[@MrSh1zzle]

One thing i usually do is create a folder for each component. the folder contains an index.ts and a "ComponentName.ts" (or .js if you use that), the component is exported as default from the index.ts, this way, you have a folder which encapsulated everything related to that specific component (styles, tests, logics, etc..) AND when importing you only have to reference the folder instead of the folder and the component because it's exported from the index.ts, (eg import ComponentFoo from "components/ComponentsFoo" instead of "components/ComponentsBar/ComponentsBar") best of both worlds. I already hear the question "Why only export from index.ts and not just place the entire component there?" ---> because if you keep it separated you can still easily search for components in a growing code-base.

[@ewolz]

As junior Dev, it's great to see these patterns half of which I formulated on my own, the other half I'm learning here 😅

[@radhamadhavi2462]

😂 hmm

[@jiancui6853]

Great video! I've been looking for feature pattern of react for weeks, and this is the most perspicuous one.

[@webwisesagar]

The Combination of Pages Folder and Components Folder in medium size projects really make structure cleaner.

[@LeonC0704]

I wish you had a course making a full complicated website (with auth) from beginning to end. I think the hardest part is putting it all together

[@MuKmGi]

Really bro 3rd method is really advance level.. Appreciate your teaching skills👍👍

[@JimKernix]

Thanks for this. I already had a pages , components and a sub-components inside components. I just added a data folder and moved my data into there. I created a utils folder but I don't have anything in there yet.

[@offroaders123]

Thanks so much for making this video! I've been searching for a breakdown like this for some time now, and this will help a lot with structuring my NPM projects' folders.

[@Mikenight120]

I was looking for this the past week!! Super great timing!!

[@adityanayak01]

Its amazing how u know so much detailed stuff and yet explain it all together in minutes 🎓

[@CreativeB34ST]

Instead of having those global folders, you could create a "global" or "shared" folder under "features" and get rid of that duplicate folder structure. This way you have src > features > [authentication, projects, settings, shared, todos] > [assets, components, context, data, hooks, ...]

[@antcannon]

This is nice. It would be great to see the files as you went along.

[@OliverPlummer905]

This is great. Using standard and best practise project folder structure is very important.

[@prodbyblvnk]

this/similiar structure combined with Material Icon Theme (VS Code has it as an extension) can do wonders

[@aleksd286]

Yes, been using folder-by-feature with my team for the past 3-4 years. Scales really well, because ourcode base has around 8-9 people actively commiting to it. (It's a monorepo too)

[@enocholuwanifiseoduyale2783]

This came just right in time. Thanks so much

[@anupmahato6163]

Clear and neat folder structure . Just few additions may be a folder of constants, router and store for state management

[@Enes-ik4bm]

Thank you for this helpful video bro. I really appreciate you for sharing infos that no one shared with us in our companies.

[@Andressuquaz156]

It always weirds me out the tiny amount of talk on this topic, for me one of the most difficult things in a react project (or any project, really) is the folder structure. A great work as always Kyle

[@elgalas]

Tiny amount? Perhaps it is a matter of perspective, but for me it seems like this is what everyone talks about!

[@balddog470]

also readability and DRY code

[@Jrrs2007]

As a pro react engineer, this is the first time I've seen it explained like this... it makes so much sense!! Thank you!!!

[@nathanr6479]

Why put entire libs under libs folder if it is much more simple to update package.json ?

[@Jrrs2007]

@@nathanr6479 the package.json is your blueprint, your package-lock.json is your actual installed modules and libs would contain the code you write for them, you don't always just import a module into your components.

[@nathanr6479]

@@Jrrs2007 that is great

[@aymenob2484]

please keep doing what you do you are my favorite youtube coder when i need to understand a subject , you helped me alot

[@kylespc1372]

I searched for this video a few weeks ago, thanks for making this!

[@thecherryandbrucechannel7551]

my life has just been changed by your video!! #ReactFolderStructure !!!!! Yes, please!!!

[@lucienchu9649]

Thanks, finally someone talk about react project file structure.

[@rafin_rahman]

simplified as usual! I will apply some of the logic to my NextJS projects

[@mikemontgomery8313]

hallelujah some clarity on building real world react apps...not the usual tutorial toy project

[@user_ahfvppkjb]

Great simplified explanation, thank you.

[@csy897]

If you have features that can be completely independent like that you may want to consider using module federation instead. Though it is a good idea to build like that from the start so that you can easily mfe it later on.

[@audaryarathod3052]

It’s like you just read my mind. Waiting for node/express pro folder structure.

[@boomer5015]

Great explanation, hadn't thought of the features approach in that way.

[@gillesashley9314]

The only problem I have with React is the freedom they give u to decide your project structure. I love React a lot but I normally choose Angular just because it structures your project for you.

[@borisnekezov6620]

Thank you very much, Kyle! Really one of your best videos! You explain really well how to scale react application. Especially for intermmediate and advanced!

[@niravparmar7856]

This is Gold ❤ Thanks brother for sharing such with the world. This will definitely be helping freshers a lot.

[@khoinguyen-ft2ys]

Thank you. Hope you make this video sooner.

[@kevinbatdorf]

Encapsulating everything in your index.js file is an anti pattern and will have issues with tree shaking code you may not be using, or when dynamically importing. Instead, you can use a ts/js config to set paths to make imports without awkward ../../. Also, I’d avoid any default exports when writing application code as it can lead to team members naming things confusingly.

[@dealloc]

Depends on the module pattern. If you use ESM and export (not export default) and import (not import * as) this is not a problem. Most tree shaking nowadays does static analysis to both find out what you import and their dependencies and only include that in a build. However, consolidating exports in an index file has the disadvantage that it can create circular dependencies (if you import it from re-exported files), makes dynamic imports import unnecessary files and make builds slower due to this optimization path. It's fine to provide a library which exports public APIs (i.e. a ui library that exports components that should be consumed by apps), but internally it can create a headache.

[@spiderdev5166]

How do you remove the awkward ../../? In nextjs i use the baseUrl:"." But in react does not work, how do you do?

[@kevinbatdorf]

@@spiderdev5166 you mean like an alias in webpack?

[@spiderdev5166]

@@kevinbatdorf Im talking about the imports instead of: import {Component} from "../components"; like this: import {Component} from "components";

[@hedi_muhammad]

Well done Kyle!

[@gauravpoudel7288]

Ur the teacher I never had

[@hanszoll4943]

Great video! Would’ve been nice to see how a small application file structure is turned into a medium sized application’s structure and so on…

[@ЛусінеАтаджанян]

Thank you so much for this great video about components tree / folders structure in react apps!

[@frogery]

may our folder structures remain as neat and clean as his hair.

[@ryanthedeveloper]

My team and I essentially use this same structure for our Big Pharma clients like Pfizer and Novartis. A little 2 cents about what we do - we first take the src folder and put a front-end & back-end folder in there. With the new server components coming out, we thing its a good idea to begin adopting this now. Then in each of those folders we have a "common" folder - which is obviously components that have the potential to be used everywhere, but being explicit makes life easier yall!! lol then we have a breakdown very similar to what is in this video except the frontend folder handles all the static assets, and no "services" since we have a server, api, middleware, auth, etc. folders in the main backend folder and the FE folder again has almost exact structures shown here - hope someone gets something cool from my ramble lol

[@GretSeat]

I appreciate your videos. I love watching them. I've been banging my head with good folder structure, so thank you for this. But I have a question... How do you get your hair so perfect every single time? I'm growing mine out, and I want to have god like hair like yours.

[@nomadshiba]

you can also make your features with package.json workspaces that way you dont accidentally import from features directly

[@dane2565]

I'd love your opinion on microfrontends, turborepo, and monorepos in general for microfrontends architecture

[@joshuagalit6936]

Can you also discuss the Atomic Design Pattern because that is what I've structured my component folders in my projects/company projects

[@xReDxTuRtLeZx]

great tips. just followed a react vid to make a portfolio site, and was unsure about how i wanted to go about the files when i start to personalize and add to it. ill be using intermediate style as it looks robust enough for a personal project

[@phillysupra]

This is the main reason I went the angular route.. It forced me to structure and organize right off the bat.

[@ScottGarson1452]

Hi Kyle. I love your videos, and even an ancient architect like myself has learned a thing or two :) I'm curious about what are your thoughts on using extensions to identify the type/intention of a code file, similar to `App.test.js`. e.g. - `text.utils.ts` vs,`textUtils.ts`, - `user.model.ts` vs. `userModel.ts` - `subsection.routes.ts`` vs `subsectionRoutes.ts`

[@Saver174HowTo]

I have started to use those extensions for my files and I see myself only benefiting from it (but note that not every file can have extension). To have an example - I have folder 'types' and there is modal.types.ts This way when I am looking for modal types I can type modal.types and this will be the first file (as I have also other components named modal, eg. ModalRenderer). So it will significantly ease the searching for file and that's what you want in most cases.

[@sunraiii]

You: "Hey dude, I was wondering if you could help me structure my Rea..." Lead dev: "MORE FOLDERS!!!"

[@jeggy94_old1]

We just use a very strict naming convention, so it's all about using the find file shortcut. Building a folder structure always fails in huge projects from my experience.

[@rdubb77]

Agreed. Too much structure actually makes it harder to find things. Strict naming and a relatively simple folder structure is best IMO

[@yajirushik2871]

I have looked for 6 days how to organize project structure properly for full-stack app I have learned smth but there are too many examples so I got confused. Thank You! 🚀

[@_romeopeter]

Really appreciate this man. Thank you!

[@IhorVyshniakov]

thank you maaaaan! for now it looks logical, but before your video it was always a headache to understand th structure & place my code into correct place in difficult project structure

[@ankitshukla8640]

Hey Kyle, please make a video that explains how to use tests in react project? Cause first thing I always do is get rid of every test script in the CRA boilerplate.

[@rohitkf8474]

Please do a video on HOW YOU STYLE YOUR HAIR !!! Coz man.... it's so freaking cool 🔥🔥❤️

[@alexanderzharkov6953]

Kyle you rock. Thank you. Awesome video, learned a lot

[@gautambedi591]

Nice content mate!

[@bigazTV]

idk why this is never part of tutorials. I just wish tutorials would show how to break down files and folders with react etc. thank you

[@orco3847]

You know, you just read my thoughts 🙏🏼😊

[@lisofsky8151]

лайк не глядя! как раз искал эту тему

[@wiktorchojnacki9746]

This is gold, thank you!

[@louisdiaz4751]

Thanks for the clarification 🔥👏

[@harviepurgatorio1056]

thank u for the folder structure

[@reactslayerdev]

Whould be great also to see how to structure right next.js + ts. Thanks for vid

[@dulanjanadevindabandara6648]

Please do a course project using this advanced folder structure.

[@mastergamer4335]

First, for the features folder in the advanced example, what do you mean by "exporting only the things you need from the index.js? Do you mean like: const createService = require('./services/create'); module.exports.createService = createService; or what do you mean? And then i think you should have said that "Think of what would be best for your project and your workflow" in the end instead of just "Think of what would be the best option for your project".

[@JavesChames]

awesome video my man

[@n3wtou]

I am using the last structure for all my projects now. On an unrelated topic, please do a video on creating a WYSYWIG Editor with draftjs.

[@newagene8276]

Can you show us how the advanced react project will like , for example as you said no imports inside features so how's it gonna work?

[@dikamilo]

Even more advanced structure for large projects is monorepo with separate apps and libs managed for example by nx build system. So for example, authentication feature is separate lib that have just that and use other smaller libs as dependency.

[@aryaadinulfadlan8998]

how about the components file that we used in many pages vs components file that we used in single pages ? how we managed them ?

[@liaozhangpeng4436]

advanced version feature is like angular module

[@azadazad]

What if a feature depends on another feature, or need something from another feature? e.g. Settings feature need to projects service to fetch projects as well - would you import part of that into the Settings feature?

[@punished_hate_army]

Hmmmm, yes, this is why my project is falling apart. I need to put my files in the right places....

[@snortexchange]

It’s the hate army bruv

[@dbmscreen]

How about if you have a wrapper of a third party react component. Where should it be? In the lib or in the components?

[@juliepanko]

have you tried feature-sliced design architecture?

[@ilmanmanarulqori5632]

Great Video, please make some Project usecase video with "Advanced" structure using react

[@aymensedki3161]

the hardest thing to do ever !! thank youuu appreciate it

[@Almighty_Flat_Earth]

React js is a shame to JavaScript community. Governments should ban the use of this stupid library. Same functionalities can be achieved with Angular and Svelte with less frustration, so what's the point of using a stupid react js which makes web development unnecessarily complicated.?

[@Georgii1212]

Hello! Where are the CSS files, in advanced case ? Did you hear about feature sliced design ?

[@amineayachi335]

i think for enterprise level we need some kind of clean architercture with 4 layers like presentation infrastructure domain and application with dependency injection and repository pattern this will follow the mvvm pattern also

[@RaubeR666]

In my projects I use something between the 2nd and 3rd approaches. I've always formulated it as "the App is a component, it consists of components". Therefore any tiniest button can be thought of as a separate app, however simple it might be - just a different app solving a specific task. Regarding the "features" folder, here it is described as a special case. But you've already had "pages" and "components" by then, so why not use the concept of collection folders? In this case you may have any number of plural-named folders with related components on demand, at any depth in the project (since all depths are equal, all being apps).

[@sidbee604]

Reusability should be first argument.

[@khoroshoigra8388]

@@sidbee604 reusability could be use the decoration pattern in a component

[@AlshafarazGazi]

Awesome stuff🤩

[@ashlandwest1647]

Bold of you to assume my features don't have their own features. JK, thanks for another great video!

[@gaofan2856]

what about put tests closer to component rather than creating separate folder for tests? Ex. ButtonComponent.ts ButtonComponent.spec.ts in the same folder together as close as possible

[@elmcapp6032]

What's the difference between a layout and component. When would I use something as a layout vs a component

[@hi_im_willow]

Thanks. This is what I needed for project 😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍

[@VietLe-hw8fy]

It looks good! But we still need time to work on it to see how good it is

[@aaaliii4u]

What about Dashboard Kayle? where would you put it? specially, when it is separate for admin and user?