Lesson 42 — Folder Structure Best Practices in React

🧭 Introduction

As React applications grow, poor folder structure becomes one of the biggest problems.
Even if your code works perfectly, a bad structure can make your project:

• Hard to understand
• Difficult to scale
• Painful to maintain
• Confusing for teams

Professional React developers always follow clean and predictable folder structures.

In this lesson, you will learn:

• Why folder structure matters
• Common folder structure mistakes
• Recommended folder structures for React apps
• Feature-based vs type-based structure
• Best practices used in real projects

❓ Why Folder Structure is Important?

Good folder structure helps you:
✔ Find files quickly
✔ Scale the app easily
✔ Reduce bugs
✔ Collaborate better with teams

Bad structure leads to:
❌ Spaghetti code
❌ Duplicate logic
❌ Confusion during debugging

⚠ Common Folder Structure Mistakes

❌ Putting everything inside components
❌ Mixing UI, logic, and API code
❌ Long import paths
❌ No clear separation of concerns

🧩 Basic React Folder Structure (Beginner)

This is common for small apps:

src/
 ├── components/
 ├── pages/
 ├── App.jsx
 └── index.js

✔ Simple
❌ Not scalable

🧩 Recommended Folder Structure (Professional)

For real-world applications, use feature-based structure.

src/
 ├── app/
 │    └── store.js
 ├── features/
 │    ├── auth/
 │    │    ├── authSlice.js
 │    │    ├── Login.jsx
 │    │    └── authService.js
 │    ├── users/
 │    │    ├── UserList.jsx
 │    │    └── userSlice.js
 ├── components/
 │    ├── common/
 │    └── layout/
 ├── services/
 │    └── api.js
 ├── hooks/
 ├── utils/
 ├── styles/
 ├── App.jsx
 └── main.jsx

✔ Scalable
✔ Easy to maintain
✔ Team-friendly

🧠 Feature-Based vs Type-Based Structure

❌ Type-Based Structure

components/
pages/
redux/
services/

❌ Logic scattered
❌ Hard to track features

✅ Feature-Based Structure (Recommended)

features/
 ├── auth/
 ├── products/
 ├── orders/

✔ Everything related to a feature in one place
✔ Easy to delete or modify features

🧩 Where Should Common Code Go?

🧠 Example: Auth Feature Folder

auth/
 ├── Login.jsx
 ├── Register.jsx
 ├── authSlice.js
 ├── authService.js
 └── authTypes.js

✔ All auth-related code in one place

🧩 Import Cleanliness Example

❌ Bad:

import Login from "../../../features/auth/Login";

✅ Good:

import Login from "@/features/auth/Login";

👉 Use absolute imports if possible.

⚠ Over-Engineering Warning

❌ Too many folders for small apps
❌ Creating structure before need
❌ Deep nesting

👉 Start simple, scale gradually.

🎯 Best Practices

✅ Prefer feature-based structure
✅ Keep files small
✅ Group related files together
✅ Separate UI, logic, and services
✅ Maintain consistency

❓ FAQs — Folder Structure in React

🔹 Is there an official React folder structure?

No. But feature-based structure is widely accepted.

🔹 Should I restructure an existing app?

Yes, but do it gradually.

🔹 Can folder structure affect performance?

No, but it affects developer productivity.

🔹 Is this structure used in real companies?

Yes. This is industry standard.

🧠 Quick Recap

✔ Folder structure matters
✔ Feature-based structure scales better
✔ Separate concerns clearly
✔ Clean imports improve readability

🎉 Conclusion

A clean folder structure is a silent superpower in React development. It doesn’t just make your app look professional — it makes it maintainable, scalable, and team-ready.

By following these best practices, you’ll think and code like a professional React developer 🚀

👉 Next Lesson (SECTION 9):
Lesson 43 — Reusable Components in React