react-stdio

react-stdio

react-stdio lets you render React components on the server, regardless of the backend technology you're using.

As its name suggests, other processes communicate with react-stdio using standard streams. The protocol is JSON, so any environment that can spawn a child process and write JSON to its stdin can use the server. Requests are handled serially, so responses are issued in the same order requests are received.

Installation

If you have node installed, you can install using npm:

$ npm install -g react-stdio

This will put the react-stdio executable in your npm bin.

If you don't have node installed, you can download the executable for your architecture from the releases page.

Usage

After installation, execute react-stdio to start the server.

To render a React component, write a JSON blob to stdin with any of the following properties:

component       The path to a file that exports a React component (required)
props           Any props you want to pass to the component (optional, default is {})
render          The type of rendering (optional, default is renderToString)

If the request is successful, the server will put a JSON blob with {"html":"...","context":...} on stdout. If the request fails for some reason, the JSON will have an error property instead of html.

Example:

$ echo '{"component":"./MyComponent","props":{"message":"hello"}}' | react-stdio

If you'd like to use a render method other than renderToString or renderToStaticMarkup you can pass a path to a file that exports your rendering function. The signature of your render function should be:

function render(element, callback) {
  // ...
}

This function is asynchronous so you have time to do data fetching before you render if you wish. Call callback(error, html) when you're finished.

Environment

Your component file is loaded in a vanilla node.js environment. If you need additional code transforms to run (e.g. using webpack or Browserify) you should create your bundle first and tell react-stdio to load your bundle instead of the plain component file. If you're using webpack to build your bundle, you'll want to use "libraryTarget": "commonjs2" in your config so the bundle exports the component using module.exports = MyComponent.

Also, since react-stdio uses the stdout stream for all program output, all writes your code makes to process.stdout (including console.log statements) are redirected to process.stderr.

Integrations

• Elixir/Phoenix
• Ruby on Rails

If you'd like to add an integration here, please submit a PR.

About

react-stdio is developed and maintained by React Training. If you're interested in learning more about what React can do for your company, please get in touch!