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:
app.use(collider(routes, {log: true}))
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() {
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'
collider(routes, url, function(Handler, data) {
var page = React.renderToString(React.createElement(Handler, {data: data}))
})