react-collider

React-collider

Express middleware for isomorphic Express + React apps. Also usable for any NodeJs app without Express.

Check out the example folder for a working example, including data-fetching from the Dailymotion API.

Features

• Handle server and client side rendering
• First call is done server side, subsequent calls use only api
• Takes care of data fetching when needed
• Possibility to serve your app by a cdn
• Data fetching is done at the component level
• Seo ready

Installation

$ npm install --save react-collider

Usage

Server side

Simply add the server middleware in your express app, giving your routes as argument.

var express  = require('express'),
    app      = express(),
    port     = process.env.PORT || 3000,
    collider = require('react-collider/server'),
    routes   = require('./routing')

app.use(collider(routes))

app.listen(port, function() {
  console.log('Listening on 127.0.0.1:' + port)
})

Logging

You can have informations in a log file:

// logs to react-collider.log
app.use(collider(routes, {log: true}))

// logs to a custom file path
app.use(collider(routes, {log: path.join(__dirname, 'server.log')}))

Client side

Similar: call the client module with your routes.

var collider = require('react-collider/client'),
    routes   = require('./routing')

collider(routes)

Components

If your component must fetch some data before being rendered, use a fetchData static method. It must return a promise.

Example of a simple component:

var Home = React.createClass({
    displayName: 'Home',
    statics: {
        fetchData: function() {
            // returns a promise
            return getHomeData()
        }
    },
    render: function() {
        var videos = getVideoList()

        return (
            <div>
                <h1>Homepage</h1>
                {videos}
            </div>
        )
    }
})

When your component includes another component which needs data too, define a getDependencies static method to return an array of components:

var Sidebar = require('./sidebar'),
    Footer  = require('./footer')

var Home = React.createClass({
    displayName: 'Home',
    statics: {
        getDependencies: function() {
            return [Sidebar, Footer]
        }
    },
    render: function() {
        return (
            <div>
                <Sidebar data={this.props.data.Sidebar} />
                <div>
                    <h1>Homepage</h1>
                </div>
                <Footer data={this.props.data.Footer} />
            </div>
        )
    }
})

Important: If you're not using es6 to write your components, be sure to define the displayName of your components. This is necessary for the module to correctly return the data.

Data Provider

The dataProvider module allows data fetching from a url or from the initial data fetched server-side.

###dataProvider(component, url, options)

• component React component. Used to store and retrieve the data in a local variable to prevent useless calls on the first page load, and for caching.
• url Url to call
• options Object. Available options:
  • once: Removes the data from the local variable after use. This means the next time you call the same data it will fetch them remotely. Default to false.
  • forceFetch: Fetches the data remotely even if the data are available locally. Default to false.
  • set: Sets the data locally after fetching them remotely. The next time you need them they will be taken locally (unless you use the forceFetch option). Default to false.

var provider = require('react-collider/dataProvider')

var Home = React.createClass({
    displayName: 'Home',
    statics: {
        fetchData: function() {
            return provider(this, 'https://api.dailymotion.com/videos?fields=id,title', {once: true})
        }
    }
})

Client side app only

If your servers are down and you can't pre-render the pages server-side, your app will still work client side (assuming your API is okay). All you need is to send a basic html file with your app bundled. Check out the example folder for an example.

Usage without Express

You can use react-collider wihtout express. You can simply use it to get the React component to render and the data to use:

var collider = require('react-collider'),
    routes = require('./routing')

var url = '/video'

// simply provide your routes and the url
collider(routes, url, function(Handler, data) {
    var page = React.renderToString(React.createElement(Handler, {data: data}))
})