Could not find a required file. Name: index.html

Question

I have been working on this React project, since a few months without having come across this error. I haven't made any changes in the location of the index.html file in the project tree, which is why I can't explain this error.

I have tried the following measures without success:

1. changing the location of public folder
2. changing the location of contents of public folder
3. changing the location of package-lock.json
4. changing the location of package.json
5. npm install
6. npm install react-scripts --save

Please find the error displayed in the terminal:

Could not find a required file.  
Name: index.html  
Searched in: /Users/Sujay/Documents/Documents/Learn Web Development the Hard Way/lacapsule/project/Dark Sky Map Bitbucket/darkskymap_frontend/public  
npm ERR! code ELIFECYCLE  
npm ERR! errno 1  
npm ERR! [email protected] start: `react-scripts start`  
npm ERR! Exit status 1  
npm ERR!   
npm ERR! Failed at the [email protected] start script.  
npm ERR! This is probably not a problem with npm. There is likely additional logging output above.
npm ERR! A complete log of this run can be found in:
npm ERR!     /Users/Sujay/.npm/_logs/2019-08-06T07_12_22_366Z-debug.log

Expected result : React project should launch without any issue.   
Actual result: Error message in terminal mentioned above.

Answer 1

index.html has been moved/removed from the /public directory

Does your project have an index.html file in the public directory?

If not you can get the one that Create React App uses here

It should be in <your project root>/public/index.html

---

If you are using Git for version control it will be able to tell you if something was moved or removed.

Run git status to view changed files

Answer 2

I had the exact same problem. Both my package-lock and package.json were outside of the root folder. Once I moved them into the root folder it started up just fine.

Answer 3

Your public folder might be missing, just create another app using create-react-app and copy paste the public folder in this directory