Uncaught ReferenceError: React is not defined

I am trying to make ReactJS work with rails using this tutorial. I am getting this error:

Uncaught ReferenceError: React is not defined

But I can access the React object in browser console
I also added public/dist/turbo-react.min.js as described here and also added //= require components line in application.js as described in this answer to no luck. Additionally,
var React = require('react') gives the error:
Uncaught ReferenceError: require is not defined

Can anyone suggest me on how to resolve this?

[EDIT 1]
Source code for reference:
This is my comments.js.jsx file:

var Comment = React.createClass({
  render: function () {
    return (
      <div className="comment">
        <h2 className="commentAuthor">
          {this.props.author}
        </h2>
          {this.props.comment}
      </div>
      );
  }
});

var ready = function () {
  React.renderComponent(
    <Comment author="Richard" comment="This is a comment "/>,
    document.getElementById('comments')
  );
};

$(document).ready(ready);

And this is my index.html.erb:

<div id="comments"></div>

Solution 1:

If you are using Babel and React 17, you might need to add "runtime": "automatic" to config.

 {
     "presets": [
         "@babel/preset-env",
        ["@babel/preset-react", {"runtime": "automatic"}]
     ]
 }

Solution 2:

I was able to reproduce this error when I was using webpack to build my javascript with the following chunk in my webpack.config.json:

externals: {
    'react': 'React'
},

This above configuration tells webpack to not resolve require('react') by loading an npm module, but instead to expect a global variable (i.e. on the window object) called React. The solution is to either remove this piece of configuration (so React will be bundled with your javascript) or load the React framework externally before this file is executed (so that window.React exists).

Solution 3:

I got this error because I was using

import ReactDOM from 'react-dom'

without importing react, once I changed it to below:

import React from 'react';
import ReactDOM from 'react-dom';

The error was solved :)

Solution 4:

If you are using Webpack, you can have it load React when needed without having to explicitly require it in your code.

Add to webpack.config.js:

plugins: [
   new webpack.ProvidePlugin({
      "React": "react",
   }),
],

See http://webpack.github.io/docs/shimming-modules.html#plugin-provideplugin