// the find
kriasoft/react-firebase-starter
Boilerplate (seed) project for creating web apps with React.js, GraphQL.js and Relay
A boilerplate for building React + GraphQL + Relay apps on Firebase and Google Cloud SQL. Targets developers who want to skip the initial wiring of auth, SSR, and a GraphQL layer and get straight to building product. Opinionated toward a specific GCP stack — if you're not on Firebase, this doesn't help you.
The Relay + GraphQL setup is genuinely complete: schema, server-side context, client-side relay factory, and the Relay compiler integration are all wired together, which is the part most tutorials skip or get wrong. SSR with ReactDOMServer and the EJS templating for the initial HTML shell is handled properly — not bolted on. The Knex migration workflow is practical and the per-environment scripts (db-backup, db-reset, db-restore) reflect real development workflow rather than toy examples. Auth via Passport.js with JWT sessions is a solid, well-understood choice that doesn't lock you into Firebase Auth.
Last pushed January 2024 but the README references Node v10 and Yarn v1 — the dependency assumptions are years stale and you'll spend time chasing CRA + Relay compiler version conflicts before writing a line of product code. The migration strategy for development is explicitly 'edit the single migration file and restore from backup', which is fine locally but trains bad habits before teams switch to the production workflow. There are no tests beyond a single App.test.js placeholder — the test setup is scaffolded but empty, so you're on your own. Relay Modern's compiler requirement (Watchman, separate compile step, schema introspection) adds meaningful operational friction that the README underplays.