ReactJS Flux Application directory structure

Question

My team is currently working on a large application being written in ReactJS using Facebook's Flux architecture. It is still in its infancy right now but it is going to grow big very soon. It will have more than 50 small component views, plenty of actions, stores and action-creators.

Currently, our directory structure looks like -

App
|___ module_1
|    |___ components
|    |    |___ component1.react.js
|    |    |___ component2.react.js
|    |___ module1ActionCreators.js
|    |___ module1Constants.js
|    |___ module1store.js
|
|___ module_2
     |___ ... (same structure as above)

One of the problems with this approach is that module_x folders will become increasingly large in number as this app grows.

Does anyone have anything to share about how they structured their app? In our experience, Facebook's example apps (todo and chat) have an architecture suited for small apps but once those stores, components and actions grow in number, that becomes harder to manage.

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

The usual directory structure is more like this:

js
├── AppBootstrap.js
├── AppConstants.js
├── AppDispatcher.js
├── actions
│   ├── AppActions.js
│   ├── FriendActions.js
│   └── PhotoActions.js
├── components
│   ├── AppRoot.react.js
│   ├── friends
│   │   ├── Friend.react.js
│   │   ├── FriendList.react.js
│   │   └── FriendSection.react.js // a querying-view, AKA controller-view
│   └── photos
│       ├── Photo.react.js
│       ├── PhotoCategoryCard.react.js
│       ├── PhotoCategoryCardTitle.react.js
│       ├── PhotoGrid.react.js
│       └── PhotoSection.react.js // another querying-view
├── stores
│   ├── FriendStore.js
│   ├── PhotoStore.js
│   └── __tests__
│       ├── FriendStore-test.js
│       └── PhotoStore-test.js
└── utils
    ├── AppWebAPIUtils.js
    ├── FooUtils.js
    └── __tests__
        ├── AppWebAPIUtils-test.js
        └── FooUtils-test.js

The css directory usually looks like a mirror of the components directory, with one css file per component. Some folks these days prefer to do all of their styling inline on the component, however.

Don't overthink all that -- there is not always a 1:1 between stores and a querying-view or "section", as there is in this example.

And really you just need to do what is right for your app. This is not dogma. The data flow stuff, the inversion of control and the decoupling of the stores -- these are much more important ideas than how you organize your files.