How to export to React
Follow these instructions to the point and you’ll be exporting to React code and components in super little time. We promise ?
Adding things to export (Code App)
- Open up our Code App. Make sure you have activated the React Export module by entering the license key that you receive upon signing up.
- Go to File, Link Sketch-file (⌘L)
- Link to one of our demo files our your own
- In our left sidebar menu click the Download icon. You should now see the React export option below HTML
- Before anything can be exported to code, you need to add each artboard/page to our export bundle. You do that by pressing Add to export (left side menu) on each and every page you want to be included in the export.
- Press Download icon. If everything worked when activating you should see React below HTML.
- Press React and save the .zip somewhere locally on your computer.
Known issues
Don’t save to Dropbox, OneDrive or Google Drive. Once you begin installing all the packages that are included in our React export, these services will most likely crash/hang. Or send you automated emails complaining you have to many files ?
This is because we use Create React App (among other things) and it contains an amazingly amount of really small files. Size-wise we’re talking about approx 220MB of downloaded packages.
iCloud seems to be working fine with these many small files, no crash so far and the syncing seems to be working great between computers linked to the same Apple ID.
?️ Cool, now let’s move on to the really exciting part…
Now comes a couple of steps that first can seem very odd and very unfamiliar. Specially if you have never installed thingies via the Terminal. We have streamlined this as much as we can but hey, this is a real design to code environment, you can’t cheat your way through this ?
?️ Node.js
For anything to work you first need to install Node.js.
- Node.js is an open source server environment
- Node.js is free
- Node.js runs on various platforms (Windows, Linux, Unix, Mac OS X, etc.)
- Node.js uses JavaScript on the server
Download the latest build from here
How to export to React (Terminal)
First of all, make sure you have admin rights to your computer or nothing of the below things will ever work.
- Open Terminal app. You know that weird little app you maybe have been in contact with when doing funky stuff to your Mac ? It’s actually really friendly, don’t be afraid. But weird yes.
- Write cd and do a blank space
- Go to your dl Sketch2React .zip, unzip and drag drop the entire folder onto your Terminal window. Drop it precisely after the words cd + your blank space. It should look something like this cd /users/
- Hit Enter ↩︎
How to install all required packages (Terminal)
- Write npm install and hit enter ↩︎
- Since you have entered the correct cd installation of all required packages should begin
How to start your development server (Terminal)
- Write npm start and hit enter ↩︎
- It will take up to one minute and then you will see this message in the Terminal will open up your default browser with localhost:3000
- Done! Now continue with your development outside of Sketch, do all changes directly in code.
How to create a build (Terminal)
- If the server is running, press Control+C to stop it
You can’t create a build while the server is running!
- Write npm run build and hit enter ↩︎
It will create a optimized build of your entire project. It takes a bit of time, just chill, stand up, look out your window or something ?
Building for Relative Paths
By default, Create React App produces a build assuming your app is hosted at the server root.
Here’s how you change that.
Open up package.json and enter this very path below version:
“homepage”: “http://mywebsite.com/relativepath”,
In our case here, we changed it to our own relative path.
Video version
Happy makings! / Team Sketch2React