React HMR WordPress Plugin

A WordPress plugin built with React with hot module replacement support.

Instructions

1. Clone the repository in your /wp-content/plugins folder.
2. cd into the repo in your terminal cd wp-react-hmr-demo
3. Install dependencies by running yarn install
4. Build the plugin assets: yarn build
5. Install the plugin from /wp-admin/plugins/ page

To start developing with HMR support, open your wp-config.php and add this constant:

define( 'WP_LOCAL_DEV', true );

Now run: yarn start

If you navigate to the plugin's menu and start changing your React code, you should see the code updates in realtime. Enjoy!

What is this WP_LOCAL_DEV constant?

When you start the webpack-dev-server with yarn start command, it opens a server in http://localhost:8080 and listens to the changes. The WP_LOCAL_DEV constant helps to detect if we are in the development environment. If configured, the plugin CSS and JS files are served from http://localhost:8080/ instead of your WordPress installation.

When not running yarn start, you should turn the constant to false.

Commands

yarn start: Starts in development mode with HMR support

yarn build: Runs the build in production mode

yarn build:dev: Runs the build in development mode