Lab Overview

React is an open-source JavaScript library for building web-based user interfaces using a declarative and component-based approach. Building sophisticated and complex web UI's becomes a breeze when using React!

This Lab is designed to show you how to install and set up a React-based development environment, allowing you to compile and execute your own React-based web applications. The Lab will then walk you through the process of creating a custom programming language voting web application that involves making AJAX requests to a sample backend API service (provided).

For those interested, the Go-based CloudAcademy Lab Create an API with Go and Gorilla Mux guides you through creating the same sample backend API service as used within this lab.

Lab Objectives

Upon completion of this lab, you will be able to:

• Install and configure a React-based development environment and respective toolset
• Create and compile basic React web applications
• Create a custom React web application which makes AJAX requests to a sample backend API service
• Build basic React web-based applications using React

You should:

• Be comfortable with basic software engineering and development principles.

Lab Environment

This lab will start with the following AWS resources provisioned automatically for you:

• A single EC2 instance, named ide.cloudacademy.platform.instance, which will have a public IP address attached. This will be the instance that you will connect to using your local workstation browser.

To achieve the lab end state, you will be walked through the process of:

• Using your local workstation browser to remotely connect to ide.cloudacademy.platform.instance
• Download, install and configure the Create React App tooling
• Create a default React web application using the Create React App tooling
• Compile, execute and test a custom React web application which makes AJAX requests to a sample backend API service

 

Updates

January 31st, 2023 - Updated the instructions and screenshots to reflect the latest UI

Jan. 11th, 2022 -  Configured the use of yarn without root permissions

Dec 22, 2021 - Updated instructions to fix the outdated nodejs version issue