To get your React app started, there are a few essential commands.

create-react-app

npx create-react-app whatever-folder-name-you-want

This command is the big one. It will create a folder named whatever-folder-name-you-want, initialize npm and a git repository in the folder, and create a starting file structure for your app.

It will also install the standard React libraries and dependencies you’ll need and set everything up for you.

Once you run that command, you’ll want to open the folder the command created with Visual Studio Code.

npm install

npm install name-of-the-package-to-install

The first command, create-react-app installs the essential packages for a React app, but there are a lot of other packages out there that you may want to use in your particular app.

You can install any that you want using npm install.

This will add the files for that package to the node_modules folder, allowing you to use them in your app.

Some commonly used packages are:

Bootstrap

npm install bootstrap

React Router

npm install react-router-dom

React Bootstrap

npm install react-bootstrap

Redux

npm install redux
npm install react-redux

If there are other packages you’d like to include, you can find the documentation for that package and it will tell you the correct install command.

npm start

npm start

This command will start up your app with webpack’s development server (similar to something like Live Server for vanilla JavaScript) so you can see your app while you’re working on it.

You need to run this command in the top folder of your app (the folder create-react-app created, for example, whatever-folder-name-you-want)

Your app will be dynamically reloaded when you make changes and save them.