README

Description

There are notes I took while following the Next.js tutorial React Foundations. I started with an empty directory and created files as instructed. I noticed the tutorial was written for older versions of React and Next.js which introduced some problems later on.

Technologies used

• JavaScript
• React 18
• React DOM 18
• Next.js 14

Project setup

Everything went smoothly while using the react and react-dom scripts from unpkg.com.

Take 1

I then created a new project using npm and modified the source code as instructed.

When I ran the development server I got the expected syntax error, but I noticed the file layout.js was not automatically created inside the app folder. I've read that's because Next.js 19 defaults to the older Pages Router instead of the newer App Router.

I haven't formally learned about either router yet, so to follow the tutorial as written I tried recreating the project using React and React DOM 18:

Take 2

• Deleted node_modules and .next folders
• Deleted package-lock.json

npm install react@18 react-dom@18 next@latest

That didn't fix the problem either. The versions of React and React DOM were 18.3.1, which is the same as the tutorial, so I realized the version 16 of Next was too recent for the tutorial.

Take 3

This time I deleted the same files and manually edited package.json to install the following versions (straight from the tutorial):

{
  "scripts": {
    "dev": "next dev"
  },
  "dependencies": {
    "next": "^14.0.3",
    "react": "^18.3.1",
    "react-dom": "^18.3.1"
  }
}

That solved the problem and the file app/layout.js was created by the dev server.

Screenshot