react-on-rails
Advanced tools
Project Objective: To provide an opinionated and optimal framework for integrating Ruby on Rails with modern JavaScript tooling and libraries, including Webpack, Babel, React, Redux, React-Router. This differs significantly from typical Rails. When considering what goes into react_on_rails, we ask ourselves, is the functionality related to the intersection of using Rails and with modern JavaScript? If so, then the functionality belongs right here. In other cases, we're releasing separate npm packages or Ruby gems. If you are interested in implementing React using traditional Rails architecture, see react-rails.
React on Rails integrates Facebook's React front-end framework with Rails. React v0.14.x is supported, with server rendering. Redux and React-Router are supported as well. See the Rails on Maui blog post that started it all!
Be sure to see:
Please see Getting Started for how to set up your Rails project for React on Rails to understand how react_on_rails can see your ReactComponents.
Normal Mode (React component will be rendered on client):
<%= react_component("HelloWorldApp", props: @some_props) %>
Server-Side Rendering (React component is first rendered into HTML on the server):
<%= react_component("HelloWorldApp", props: @some_props, prerender: true) %>
The component_name parameter is a string matching the name you used to globally expose your React component. So, in the above examples, if you had a React component named "HelloWorldApp," you would register it with the following lines:
import ReactOnRails from 'react-on-rails';
import HelloWorldApp from './HelloWorldApp';
ReactOnRails.register({ HelloWorldApp });
Exposing your component in this way is how React on Rails is able to reference your component from a Rails view. You can expose as many components as you like, as long as their names do not collide. See below for the details of how you expose your components via the react_on_rails webpack configuration.
@some_props can be either a hash or JSON string. This is an optional argument assuming you do not need to pass any options (if you want to pass options, such as prerender: true, but you do not want to pass any properties, simply pass an empty hash {}). This will make the data available in your component:
# Rails View
<%= react_component("HelloWorldApp", props: { name: "Stranger" }) %>
// inside your React component
this.props.name // "Stranger"
Like the react-rails gem, React on Rails is capable of server-side rendering with fragment caching and is compatible with turbolinks. Unlike react-rails, which depends heavily on sprockets and jquery-ujs, React on Rails uses webpack and does not depend on jQuery. While the initial setup is slightly more involved, it allows for advanced functionality such as:
See the react-webpack-rails-tutorial for an example of a live implementation and code.
Webpack is used for 2 purposes:
application.js.This usage of webpack fits neatly and simply into the existing Rails sprockets system and you can include React components on a Rails view with a simple helper.
Compare this to some alternative approaches for SPAs (Single Page Apps) that utilize Webpack and Rails. They will use a separate node server to distribute web pages, JavaScript assets, CSS, etc., and will still use Rails as an API server. A good example of this is our ShakaCode team member Alex's article Universal React with Rails: Part I.
We're definitely not doing that. With react_on_rails, webpack is mainly generating a nice JavaScript file for inclusion into application.js. We're going to KISS. And that's all relative given how much there is to get right in an enterprise class web application.
gem "react_on_rails", "~> 3"
rails generate react_on_rails:install --help
rails generate react_on_rails:install
npm install
foreman start -f Procfile.dev
All JavaScript in React On Rails is loaded from npm: react-on-rails. To manually install this (you did not use the generator), assuming you have a standard configuration, run this command:
cd client && npm i --saveDev react-on-rails
That will install the latest version and update your package.json.
The generator installs your webpack files in the client folder. Foreman uses webpack to compile your code and output the bundled results to app/assets/javascripts/generated, which are then loaded by sprockets. These generated bundle files have been added to your .gitignore for your convenience.
Inside your Rails views, you can now use the react_component helper method provided by React on Rails. You can pass props directly to the react component helper. You can also initialize a Redux store with view helper redux_store so that the store can be shared amongst multiple React components. Your best bet is to scan the code inside of the /spec/dummy sample app.
In most cases, you should use the prerender: false (default behavior) with the provided helper method to render the React component from your Rails views. In some cases, such as when SEO is vital or many users will not have JavaScript enabled, you can enable server-rendering by passing prerender: true to your helper, or you can simply change the default in config/initializers/react_on_rails.
Now the server will interpret your JavaScript using ExecJS and pass the resulting HTML to the client. We recommend using therubyracer as ExecJS's runtime. The generator will automatically add it to your Gemfile for you.
Note that server-rendering requires globally exposing your components by setting them to global, not window (as is the case with client-rendering). If using the generator, you can pass the --server-rendering option to configure your application for server-side rendering.
In the following screenshot you can see the 3 parts of React on Rails rendering:
<div id="HelloWorld-react-component-0"> specifies the div where to place the React rendering. It encloses the server-rendered HTML for the React componentNote: If server rendering is not used (prerender: false), then the major difference is that the HTML rendered for the React component only contains the outer div: <div id="HelloWorld-react-component-0"/>. The first specification of the React component is just the same.
Each time you change your client code, you will need to re-generate the bundles (the webpack-created JavaScript files included in application.js). The included Foreman Procfile.dev will take care of this for you by watching your JavaScript code files for changes. Simply run foreman start -f Procfile.dev.
On Heroku deploys, the lib/assets.rake file takes care of running webpack during deployment. If you have used the provided generator, these bundles will automatically be added to your .gitignore in order to prevent extraneous noise from re-generated code in your pull requests. You will want to do this manually if you do not use the provided generator.
Place your JavaScript code inside of the provided client/app folder. Use modules just as you would when using webpack alone. The difference here is that instead of mounting React components directly to an element using React.render, you expose your components globally and then mount them with helpers inside of your Rails views.
Normal Mode (JavaScript is Rendered on client):
If you are not server rendering, clientRegistration.jsx will have
import HelloWorld from '../components/HelloWorld';
import ReactOnRails from 'react-on-rails';
ReactOnRails.register({ HelloWorld });
Server-Side Rendering:
If you are server rendering, serverRegistration.jsx will have this. Note, you might be initializing HelloWorld with version specialized for server rendering.
import HelloWorld from '../components/HelloWorld';
import ReactOnRails from 'react-on-rails';
ReactOnRails.register({ HelloWorld });
In general, you may want different initialization for your server rendered components.
Once the bundled files have been generated in your app/assets/javascripts/generated folder and you have exposed your components globally, you will want to run your code in your Rails views using the included helper method.
This is how you actually render the React components you exposed to window inside of clientRegistration (and global inside of serverRegistration if you are server rendering).
react_component(component_name, options = {})
React.createClass, or a generator function that returns a React component.redux_store(store_name, props = {})
ReactOnRails.registerStore({storeName}) in the same place that you register your components.ReactOnRails.getStore('storeName') to get the hydrated Redux store to attach to your components.Why would you create a function that returns a React compnent? For example, you may want the ability to use the passed-in props to initialize a redux store or setup react-router. Or you may want to return different components depending on what's in the props. ReactOnRails will automatically detect a registered generator function.
server_render_js(js_expression, options = {})
replay_console (boolean)This is a helper method that takes any JavaScript expression and returns the output from evaluating it. If you have more than one line that needs to be executed, wrap it in an IIFE. JS exceptions will be caught and console messages handled properly.
The react_on_rails:install generator combined with the example pull requests of generator runs will get you up and running efficiently. There's a fair bit of setup with integrating Webpack with Rails. Defaults for options are such that the default is for the flag to be off. For example, the default for -R is that redux is off, and the default of -b means that skip-bootstrap is off.
Run rails generate react_on_rails:install --help for descriptions of all available options:
Usage:
rails generate react_on_rails:install [options]
Options:
-R, [--redux], [--no-redux] # Install Redux gems and Redux version of Hello World Example
-S, [--server-rendering], [--no-server-rendering] # Add necessary files and configurations for server-side rendering
-j, [--skip-js-linters], [--no-skip-js-linters] # Skip installing JavaScript linting files
-L, [--ruby-linters], [--no-ruby-linters] # Install ruby linting files, tasks, and configs
-H, [--heroku-deployment], [--no-heroku-deployment] # Install files necessary for deploying to Heroku
-b, [--skip-bootstrap], [--no-skip-bootstrap] # Skip installing files for bootstrap support
Runtime options:
-f, [--force] # Overwrite files that already exist
-p, [--pretend], [--no-pretend] # Run but do not make any changes
-q, [--quiet], [--no-quiet] # Suppress status output
-s, [--skip], [--no-skip] # Skip files that already exist
Description:
Create react on rails files for install generator.
For a clear example of what each generator option will do, see our generator results repo: Generator Results. Each pull request shows a git "diff" that highlights the changes that the generator has made. Another good option is to create a simple test app per the Tutorial for v2.0.
The generated client code follows our organization scheme. Each unique set of functionality, is given its own folder inside of client/app/bundles. This encourages for modularity of domains.
Inside of the generated "HelloWorld" domain you will find the following folders:
startup: two types of files, one that return a container component and implement any code that differs between client and server code (if using server-rendering), and a clientRegistration file that exposes the aforementioned files (as well as a serverRegistration file if using server rendering). These registration files are what webpack is using as an entry point.containers: "smart components" (components that have functionality and logic that is passed to child "dumb components").components: includes "dumb components", or components that simply render their properties and call functions given to them as properties by a parent component. Ultimately, at least one of these dumb components will have a parent container component.You may also notice the app/lib folder. This is for any code that is common between bundles and therefore needs to be shared (for example, middleware).
If you have used the --redux generator option, you will notice the familiar additional redux folders in addition to the aforementioned folders. The Hello World example has also been modified to use Redux.
Note the organizational paradigm of "bundles". These are like application domains and are used for grouping your code into webpack bundles, in case you decide to create different bundles for deployment. This is also useful for separating out logical parts of your application. The concept is that each bundle will have it's own Redux store. If you have code that you want to reuse across bundles, including components and reducers, place them under /client/app/lib.
You may wish to have 2 React components share the same the Redux store. For example, if your navbar is a React component, you may want it to use the same store as your component in the main area of the page. You may even want multiple React components in the main area, which allows for greater modularity. In addition, you may want this to work with Turbolinks to minimize reloading the JavaScript. A good example of this would be something like an a notifications counter in a header. As each notifications is read in the body of the page, you would like to update the header. If both the header and body share the same Redux store, then this is trivial. Otherwise, we have to rely on other solutions, such as the header polling the server to see how many unread notifications exist.
Suppose the Redux store is called appStore, and you have 3 React components that each need to connect to a store: NavbarApp, CommentsApp, and BlogsApp. I named them with App to indicate that they are the registered components.
You will need to make a function that can create the store you will be using for all components and register it via the registerStore method. Note, this is a storeCreator, meaning that it is a function that takes props and returns a store:
ReactOnRails.registerStore({
appStore
});
When registering your component with React on Rails, you can get the store via ReactOnRails.getStore:
// getStore will initialize the store if not already initialized, so creates or retrieves store
const appStore = ReactOnRails.getStore("appStore");
return (
<Provider store={appStore}>
<CommentsApp />
</Provider>
);
From your Rails view, you can use the provided helper redux_store(store_name, props) to create a fresh version of the store (because it may already exist if you came from visiting a previous page). Note, for this example, since we're initializing this from the main layout, we're using a generic name of @react_props. This means in this case that Rails controllers would set @react_props to the properties to hydrate the Redux store.
app/views/layouts/application.html.erb
...
<%= redux_store("appStore", @react_props) %>;
<%= react_component("NavbarApp") %>
yield
...
Components are created as stateless function(al) components. Since you can pass in initial props via the helper redux_store, you do not need to pass any props directly to the component. Instead, the component hydrates by connecting to the store.
_comments.html.erb
<%= react_component("CommentsApp") %>
_blogs.html.erb
<%= react_component("BlogsApp") %>
Note: You will not be doing any partial updates to the Redux store when loading a new page. When the page content loads, React on Rails will rehydrate a new version of the store with whatever props are placed on the page.
The generator has amended the folders created in client/assets/ to Rails's asset path. We recommend that if you have any existing assets that you want to use with your client code, you should move them to these folders and use webpack as normal. This allows webpack's development server to have access to your assets, as it will not be able to see any assets in the default Rails directories which are above the /client directory.
Alternatively, if you have many existing assets and don't wish to move them, you could consider creating symlinks from client/assets that point to your Rails assets folders inside of app/assets/. The assets there will then be visible to both Rails and webpack.
React on Rails ships with Twitter Bootstrap already integrated into the build. Note that the generator removes require_tree in both the application.js and application.css.scss files. This is to ensure the correct load order for the bootstrap integration, and is usually a good idea in general. You will therefore need to explicitly require your files.
How the Bootstrap library is loaded depends upon whether one is using the Rails server or the HMR development server.
In the former case, the Rails server loads bootstrap-sprockets, provided by the bootstrap-sass ruby gem (added automatically to your Gemfile by the generator) via the app/assets/stylesheets/_bootstrap-custom.scss partial.
This allows for using Bootstrap in your regular Rails stylesheets. If you wish to customize any of the Bootstrap variables, you can do so via the client/assets/stylesheets/_pre-bootstrap.scss partial.
When using the webpack dev server, which does not go through Rails, bootstrap is loaded via the bootstrap-sass-loader which uses the client/bootstrap-sass-config.js file.
Because the webpack dev server and Rails each load Bootstrap via a different file (explained in the two sections immediately above), any changes to the way components are loaded in one file must also be made to the other file in order to keep styling consistent between the two. For example, if an import is excluded in _bootstrap-custom.scss, the same import should be excluded in bootstrap-sass-config.js so that styling in the Rails server and the webpack dev server will be the same.
Bootstrap integration is enabled by default, but can be disabled by passing the --skip-bootstrap flag (alias -b). When you don't need Bootstrap in your existing project, just skip it as needed.
The React on Rails generator can add linters and their recommended accompanying configurations to your project. There are two classes of linters: ruby linters and JavaScript linters.
JavaScript linters are enabled by default, but can be disabled by passing the --skip-js-linters flag (alias j) , and those that run in Node have been add to client/package.json under devDependencies.
Ruby linters are disabled by default, but can be enabled by passing the --ruby-linters flag when generating. These linters have been added to your Gemfile in addition to the appropriate Rake tasks.
We really love using all the linters! Give them a try.
To run the linters (runs all linters you have installed, even if you installed both Ruby and Node):
rake lint
Run this command to see all the linters available
rake -T lint
Here's the list:
rake lint # Runs all linters
rake lint:eslint # eslint
rake lint:js # JS Linting
rake lint:jscs # jscs
rake lint:rubocop[fix] # Run Rubocop lint in shell
rake lint:ruby # Run ruby-lint as shell
rake lint:scss # See docs for task 'scss_lint'
One of the benefits of using webpack is access to webpack's dev server and its hot module replacement functionality.
The webpack dev server with HMR will apply changes from the code (or styles!) to the browser as soon as you save whatever file you're working on. You won't need to reload the page, and your data will still be there. Start foreman as normal (it boots up the Rails server and the webpack HMR dev server at the same time).
foreman start -f Procfile.dev
Open your browser to localhost:4000. Whenever you make changes to your JavaScript code in the client folder, they will automatically show up in the browser. Hot module replacement is already enabled by default.
Note that React-related error messages are typically significantly more helpful when encountered in the dev server than the Rails server as they do not include noise added by the React on Rails gem.
As you add more routes to your front-end application, you will need to make the corresponding API for the dev server in client/server.js. See our example server.js from our tutorial.
If you are using react-rails in your project, it is pretty simple to migrate to react_on_rails.
Remove the 'react-rails' gem from your Gemfile.
Remove the generated lines for react-rails in your application.js file.
//= require react
//= require react_ujs
//= require components
Note: If you have components from react-rails you want to use, then you will need to port them into react_on_rails which uses webpack instead of the asset pipeline.
cd spec/dummy
bundle && npm i
foreman start
Bug reports and pull requests are welcome. This project is intended to be a safe, welcoming space for collaboration, and contributors are expected to adhere to our version of the Contributor Covenant Code of Conduct).
See Contributing to get started.
The gem is available as open source under the terms of the MIT License.
The project started with Justin Gordon pairing with Samnang Chhun to figure out how to do server rendering with Webpack plus Rails. Alex Fedoseev then joined in. Rob Wise, Aaron Van Bokhoven, and Andy Wang did the bulk of the generators. Many others have contributed.
We owe much gratitude to the work of the react-rails gem. We've also been inspired by the react_webpack_rails gem.
Visit our forums!. We've got a category dedicated to react_on_rails.
If you're looking for consulting on a project using React and Rails, email us ([contact@shakacode.com](mailto: contact@shakacode.com))! You can also join our slack room for some free advice.
We're looking for great developers that want to work with Rails + React with a distributed, worldwide team, for our own products, client work, and open source. More info here.
[3.0.2] - 2016-02-15
FAQs
react-on-rails JavaScript for react_on_rails Ruby gem
The npm package react-on-rails receives a total of 49,872 weekly downloads. As such, react-on-rails popularity was classified as popular.
We found that react-on-rails demonstrated a healthy version release cadence and project activity because the last version was released less than a year ago. It has 0 open source maintainers collaborating on the project.
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