How do I serve a React application from an Spring Boot application? - spring

Question

I would like to serve the results of the Webpack build of a ReactJS UI application from a Spring Boot server application.
As the Webpack build generates all the assets in a "dist" folder i.e. index.html, bundle.js, etc... Accessed as i.e. http://localhost/index.html
And the Spring Boot application serves the API URLs from i.e. http://localhost/api/xxx

Answer 1

create .env file in the root of react project (next to package.json)
put PUBLIC_URL=/nameContextRoot in .env file (name of context root typically is name of war file)
build react project npm run build
For me it generates its contents in build directory of react project
copy the contents of the build directory to the spring-boot apps static directory
static directory should be a normal folder in src/main/resources
clean and rebuild spring boot project and run it
Contents are now properly served
UPDATE
Spring Boot structure
D:.
├───.mvn
│ └───wrapper
├───.settings
├───src
│ ├───main
│ │ ├───java
│ │ │ └───my.java.stuff
│ │ ├───resources
│ │ │ └───static
│ │ │ └───static
│ │ │ ├───css
│ │ │ └───js
│ │ └───webapp
│ └───test
│ └───java
│ └───my.java.tests
├───target
│ ├───classes
│ │ ├───java.classes
│ │ └───static
│ │ ├───css
│ │ ├───js
│ │ └───static
│ │ ├───css
│ │ └───js
│ ├───generated-sources
│ │ └───annotations
│ ├───m2e-wtp
│ │ └───web-resources
│ │ └───META-INF
│ │ └───maven
│ │ └───java.stuff
│ ├───maven-archiver
│ ├───maven-status
│ │ └───maven-compiler-plugin
│ │ └───compile
│ │ └───default-compile
│ ├───rclient-0.0.1-SNAPSHOT
│ │ ├───META-INF
│ │ └───WEB-INF
│ │ ├───classes
│ │ │ ├───java stuff
│ │ │ └───static
│ │ └───lib
│ └───test-classes
└───WebContent
└───META-INF
ReactJS project structure
D:.
├───build
│ └───static
│ ├───css
│ └───js
├───node_modules
├───public
└───src
├───components
├───domain
└───util
Your api endpoints will be also served below the context root. They have nothing to do with React.
The hint of #Codo to use a reverse proxy to access the static content is still valid. But here you asked specifically for how to host the react app in a spring boot application.