1# React + TanStack + Hono Val Town Project
2
3Full-stack message board built for Val Town.
11
12### Frontend
13- React 19
14- TanStack Router (code-first routing)
15- TanStack Query (server state management)
31โ โโโ database/ # Drizzle schema, migrations, and queries
32โ โโโ index.ts # Main Hono application
33โโโ frontend/ # React app running in browser
34โ โโโ components/ # React components
35โ โโโ lib/ # Utilities and hooks
36โ โโโ router.tsx # TanStack Router configuration
40## API Endpoints
41
42- `GET /` - Serves the React application with initial data
43- `GET /api/messages` - Fetch all messages (JSON)
44- `POST /api/messages` - Create a new message
1# Frontend
2
3This template is a classic client-side-only React app.
4
5## `index.html`
9This HTML file imports `/frontend/style.css` from `/public/style.css` and `/frontend/favicon.svg` from `/frontend/favicon.svg`. Everything in `/frontend/` is mapped to `/public` by `/backend/index.ts`. This is just a convention. You could import & serve everything out of the same folder name.
10
11This HTML file has a `<div id="root"></div>`, which is where we mount the React app.
12
13This HTML file imports `/frontend/index.tsx` from `/public/index.tsx`, which is the **entrypoint** for all frontend JavaScript, including all the React. It is not a problem that it imports a file with a `.tsx` extension becaues browsers ignore file extensions. They only pay attention to content-types, which is great, because all these files will be returned as transpiled JS with the appropriate JS content type by [stevekrouse/utils/serve-public](https://www.val.town/x/stevekrouse/utils/branch/main/code/serve-public/README.md).)
14
15## `index.tsx`
16
17This file is the **entrypoint** for frontend JavaScript. It imports the React app from `/frontend/components/App.tsx` and mounts it on `<div id="root"></div>`.
18
19It also looks for *bootstrapped* JSON data at `window.__INITIAL_DATA`, and passes that only to the `<App />`.
25## `components/`
26
27This directory is where the React components are stored. They're pretty standard client-side React components.
12## Serving assets to the frontend
13
14This backend HTTP server is responsible for serving all static assets to the browser to render the app, including HTML, JavaScript (including all client-side React), CSS, and even the favicon SVG.
15
16In a normal server environment, you would likely use a middleware [like this one](https://hono.dev/docs/getting-started/nodejs#serve-static-files) to serve static files. Some frameworks or deployment platforms automatically make any content inside a `public/` folder public.
26## CRUD API Routes
27
28This app has two CRUD API routes: for reading and inserting into the messages table. They both speak JSON, which is standard. They import their functions from `/backend/database/queries.ts`. These routes are called from the React app to refresh and update data.
29
30## Errors
8## Migrations
9
10In `backend/database/migrations.ts`, this app creates a new SQLite table `reactHonoStarter_messages` to store messages.
11
12This "migration" runs once on every app startup because it's imported in `index.ts`. You can comment this line out for a slight (30ms) performance improvement on cold starts. It's left in so that users who fork this project will have the migration run correctly.
1import { useQuery, useMutation, useQueryClient } from "https://esm.sh/@tanstack/react-query@^5.0.0?deps=react@19";
2import { type Message } from "../../shared/utils.ts";
3
1/** @jsxImportSource https://esm.sh/react@19 */
2import { createRoot } from "https://esm.sh/react-dom@19/client";
3import React, { useEffect, useState } from "https://esm.sh/react@19";
4import { createRouter, createRootRoute, createRoute, RouterProvider, useSearch, useNavigate } from "https://esm.sh/@tanstack/react-router@1.62.1?deps=react@19,react-dom@19";
5import { QueryClient, QueryClientProvider, useQuery, useQueryClient } from "https://esm.sh/@tanstack/react-query@5.17.0?deps=react@19,react-dom@19";
6
7interface WeatherData {
325 };
326
327 const handleLocationSubmit = async (e: React.FormEvent) => {
328 e.preventDefault();
329 if (!customLocation.trim()) return;
11- **Runtime**: Deno (Val Town platform)
12- **Backend**: Hono web framework
13- **Frontend**: React 19 with TypeScript
14- **Routing**: TanStack Router for URL state management
15- **Styling**: CSS with responsive grid layouts
23โโโ frontend/
24โ โโโ index.html # Main HTML page
25โ โโโ index.tsx # React app with weather dashboard UI
26โ โโโ style.css # Mobile-optimized styles with responsive grid
27โโโ deno.json # Deno configuration
45
46### Frontend (frontend/index.tsx)
47- **React 18.2.0** with TypeScript interfaces
48- **Responsive grid layout**: 6 โ 8 โ 12 โ 24 columns based on screen size
49- **Key features**:
117### Val Town Specific
118- Use `https://esm.sh` for all imports to ensure browser/server compatibility
119- Pin React dependencies to version 19
120- Always include `/** @jsxImportSource https://esm.sh/react@19 */` at top of React files
121- Use environment variables with `Deno.env.get()` for secrets (never bake into code)
122
1/** @jsxImportSource https://esm.sh/react@18.2.0 */
2import React, { useEffect, useState } from "react";
3import { isProdBranch } from "../../shared/is-prod-branch.ts";
4
1# React + TanStack + Hono Val Town Project
2
3Full-stack message board built for Val Town.
11
12### Frontend
13- React 19
14- TanStack Router (code-first routing)
15- TanStack Query (server state management)
31โ โโโ database/ # Drizzle schema, migrations, and queries
32โ โโโ index.ts # Main Hono application
33โโโ frontend/ # React app running in browser
34โ โโโ components/ # React components
35โ โโโ lib/ # Utilities and hooks
36โ โโโ router.tsx # TanStack Router configuration
40## API Endpoints
41
42- `GET /` - Serves the React application with initial data
43- `GET /api/messages` - Fetch all messages (JSON)
44- `POST /api/messages` - Create a new message
1import { useQuery, useMutation, useQueryClient } from "https://esm.sh/@tanstack/react-query@^5.0.0?deps=react@19";
2import { type Message } from "../../shared/utils.ts";
3
