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Zubair Mohsin
Zubair Mohsin

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Laravel and Inertia with React and TypeScript

#laravel #react #typescript
  • Create a fresh Laravel project. 
laravel new inertia-typescript
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Back-End

  • Let's setup back-end for Inertia.js by following instructions from here. 
composer require inertiajs/inertia-laravel
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  • Create Root template at resources/views/app.blade.php with following contents: 
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
  <head>
    <meta charset="utf-8" />
    <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0, maximum-scale=1.0" />
    <link href="{{ mix('/css/app.css') }}" rel="stylesheet" />
    <script src="{{ mix('/js/app.js') }}" defer></script>
  </head>
  <body>
    @inertia
  </body>
</html>
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  • Create a route in routes/web.php 
use Inertia\Inertia;

Route::get('home', function(){
  return Inertia::render('Home');
});
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Note: We haven't yet created Home component specified inside render method.

Front-End

Let's set up our front-end by following instructions from here.

  • We'll start with bunch of installations: 
npm install react react-dom @types/react
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npm install @inertiajs/inertia @inertiajs/inertia-react
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npm install --save-dev ts-loader typescript
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  • Initialize typescript by creating tsconfig.json file using below command: 
tsc --init --jsx react
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  • Initialize our Inertia app like below inside resources/js/app.js: 
import { InertiaApp } from '@inertiajs/inertia-react'
import React from 'react'
import { render } from 'react-dom'

const app = document.getElementById('app')

render(
  <InertiaApp
    initialPage={JSON.parse(app.dataset.page)}
    resolveComponent={name => import(`./Pages/${name}`).then(module => module.default)}
  />,
  app
)
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  • Create our Home component at resources/js/Pages/Home.tsx 
import React from "react";

const Home = () => {
    let foo: string = "React";
    const bar: string = "TypeScript";

    return (
        <h1>
            Hello {foo} + {bar}
        </h1>
    );
};

export default Home;
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Notice that I have .tsx extension instead of .jsx

  • Change mix.js to mix.ts in webpack.mix.js file: 
mix.ts('resources/js/app.js', 'public/js')
    .postCss('resources/css/app.css', 'public/css', [
        //
    ]);
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  • Next, npm run dev

  • Read Update below 👇🏼

🔴 You will face an error here inside your resources/js/app.js file because we have written some JSX syntax to initialize our app but we haven't installed react-preset so that Babel can understand it.

  • Lets install @babel/preset-react as dev dependency. 
npm install --save-dev @babel/preset-react
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  • Create a .babelrc file at root of our project with following contents: 
{
  "presets": ["@babel/preset-react"]
}
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  • Run npm run dev again and you should be able to compile your assets now. Visit the /home route to verify that you are able to see the output in browser.

Disclaimer: This is not the definitive guide on setting up TypeScript with React for Laravel and Inertia. This is just how I am proceeding with this setup.

If you find any mistakes, or know a better approach please leave your feedback in comments below 🙏🏼

Demo source code can be found here.

Update

Amitav Roy mentioned on Twitter if we can completely ditch JavaScript and also be able to avoid @babel/preset-react step above. Turns out it can be done easily.
Commit from Demo repository that shows how it can be done: 49be431

Top comments (6)

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hasnatbabur profile image
Hasnat Babur •

Nice one. Thanks

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andyyou profile image
andyyou •

I found that code split feature is not working after setup. Originally pages will divide to different js after building but now all in app.js

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andyyou profile image
andyyou •

I solve the problem. If you want to use Inertia.js with code split (dynamic imports) you should setup tsconfig.json

{
  "module": "esnext",
  "moduleResolution": "node", 
}
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Ref here: stackoverflow.com/questions/563757...

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ddnazzah profile image
Dieu-Donne Nazzah •

Nice, Thanks. The only suggestion to add is since every thing is being bundled, all dependencies can actually be devDepencies

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risurina profile image
Ronnie Isurina •

Nice, Thanks!

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sreek86 profile image
Sreekant Krishnan •

I'm getting 404 error. I know it has something to do with Laravel being on a sub-directory, but not able to figure out how to get a workaround. Can you please help?

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