src/Middleware/HttpOptionsMiddleware.php from https://www.munderwood.ca/index.php/2017/02/28/responding-to-http-options-requests-in-cakephp/

with additions inspired by https://stackoverflow.com/a/7454204

You need composer and node

git clone https://github.com/jmcd73/cakephp-react-backend.git
cd cakephp-react-backend
composer install #  installs CakePHP, DebugKit
git submodule init
git submodule update
cd cakephp-react-frontend
yarn install
yarn start

Create a database (DB name is "cake") using the config/schema/cake.sql file

mysql -uroot -p <yourpassword> < config/schema/cake.sql

Copy config/app.default.php to config/app.php and change the DB connection details to suit the above database

Run the default cake server

bin/cake server

Login to the CakePHP app (assuming you serving it from the web root)

http://localhost:8765/users/login

Email: [email protected]

password: password

src/Template/Articles/react.ctp contains the code to mount the react SPA (Single Page Application)

View the react() function block in src/Controller/ArticlesController.php to see how the react js and css is loaded from webroot/react/asset-manifest.json

For allowing fetch() to have access to the CakePHP endpoints see changes in

The CsrfProtectionMiddleware has been switched off because I couldn't get it working so I have commented it out in src/Application.php

/*
 ->add(new CsrfProtectionMiddleware([
                'httpOnly' => true
            ]));
*/