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Build a ‘Hello World!’ Application in 5 Minutes with Fusion.js

April 1, 2019 / Global

Fusion.js, Uber’s open source universal web framework, is designed to make web development easier and produce lightweight, high-performing apps. We initially built Fusion.js to revamp our own websites, and have since offered it to the community as an open source project.

In this tutorial, we walkthrough how to get started with Fusion.js and have a ‘Hello World!’ application up and running in 5 minutes. The tutorial walks through three easy steps, from creating the application to displaying ‘Hello World!’ in the browser. ‘The Hello World!’ application is a good starting point for those seeking to get deeper into the Fusion.js framework.

Step 1: Create a boilerplate app

Creating a Fusion.js application is easy. In this tutorial, we will use Yarn, an open source package manager created at Facebook, to set up the Fusion.js scaffold for our application. Yarn replaces the existing workflow with the npm client or another package manager while remaining compatible with the npm registry. It has the same feature set as existing workflows while operating faster, more securely, and more reliably.

Note: If you have already completed this step, please skip to Step 2: Run your app.

In your terminal, run the following yarn command to create a boilerplate app, hello-world-app:

yarn create fusion-app hello-world-app

The command will create a new directory, hello-world-app, that contains all the files needed to set up and run Fusion.js. When Yarn finishes successfully, the terminal will display the message “Success! You have created a Fusion.js project”. Now go to the newly-created source directory of hello-world-app.

cd hello-world-app/src

Run ls to view the file structure of hello-world-app.

.
├── pages
│ ├── home.js
│ └── pageNotFound.js
├── main.js
└── root.js

The directory pages contains the React code for rendering the demo page and the “Page not found” page. The file main.js is the application’s entrypoint, and root.js contains routes.

Step 2: Run your app

You are now ready to start the application you created in Step 1. In your terminal, run the following yarn command in the project’s root directory:

yarn dev

This serves up the Fusion.js demo page, as shown below, on http://localhost:3000.

Step 3: Say ‘Hello World!’

In the final step of this tutorial, you will rewrite the default Fusion.js demo page to make it say ‘Hello World!’ To simplify this step, you must replace the demo code in the existing home.js file with new code that can render the ‘Hello World!’ text in your browser. This means the routes will remain the same and no other code changes are required.

Open home.js and remove the existing code so the file is completely empty.
Copy and paste the code snippet below to home.js. This snippet imports the React libraries used to render the ‘Hello World!’ text in your browser.

// src/pages/home.js

import React from ‘react’;

const Home = () => (

);

export default Home;

Add ‘Hello World!’ text between <div> tags.

// src/pages/home.js

import React from ‘react’;

const Home = () => (
<div>Hello World!</div>
);

export default Home;

Finally, re-run yarn dev to rerun your application. As soon the server starts again, access your file by visiting http://localhost:3000. The message Build completed in x.xxxs will be shown in the terminal when the server has restarted. In your browser, you should now see your app’s home page displaying ‘Hello World!’

Great job! You’ve just learned how to create a simple application with Fusion.js! Eager to learn more about the web framework? Read our tutorial on how to create plugins with Fusion.js.

If building large-scale web applications interests you, consider applying for a role on Uber’s Web Platform team!