Is it possible to use decorators with create-react-app?

Question

I have understood that since Babel doesn't support decorators out of the box (because it's in early stages of definition) create-react-app doesn't support it as well.

I know that you can eject the generated app and configure Babel to support them, but I don't want to do that.

Finally, libraries like MobX allow you to use decorator's behavior without actually using them, with the help of some utility functions like described at https://mobx.js.org/best/decorators.html

Is there something similar for React?

Answer 1

Yes, you can, but you need a couple of things,

Make sure you have react-app-rewired and customize-cra installed so you can override webpack and babel configs

install @babel/plugin-proposal-decorators

and update your config-overrides.js file :

const { override, addBabelPlugin } = require("customize-cra");
const pluginProposalDecorators = require("@babel/plugin-proposal-decorators");

module.exports = override(  
  addBabelPlugin(pluginProposalDecorators)
);