This may be a dumb question, but is the default react app (created using npm create-react-app my-app) using node.js? I am confused because in my web development class at university, I had to download node.js to create react applications. However, I didn't have to do anything like creating a server or initiating a node.js file, which is described in w3school's node.js tutorial. Because of this, I found out that I don't even really know what node is used for, besides downloading packages like redux and whatnot.
create-react-app uses node.js for all of its dev tooling. Likewise, a lot of the tools you'll use in the React ecosystem (like webpack, prettier, npm), all run on top of node.js as well).
You'll most probably build your react app to a static file, in which case the production output will not require node.js, it will be html and javascript assets that can be served directly to a client.
Hope that helps! Let me know if you have other specific questions
Node.js is used for server-side while React.js is for the front-end part. So, no, you don't need Node.js.
Under development mode, yes. Create react app runs NodeJs with Webpack Dev Server to allow you get feedback when modifing files, start or stop the server.
Related
I have made a web app using express and react, and I want to bundle it into a desktop application, is this possible using electron?
I recommend the tutorial at: https://www.electronforge.io/guides/framework-integration/react
This isn't too hard actually, you can find all instructions you need in https://www.electronforge.io/
To accomplish this, either your app keeps hosting it with express locally and electrons connects to localhost, or even better, do it by not hosting any servers and just keeping your JSX and html files in your project.
If you're using TypeScript and ES6, also consider taking a look here for some examples: https://www.electronforge.io/templates/typescript-+-webpack-template
I have a node.js application that run as a application server.
It is deployed on an Ubuntu 20.04 machine running on AWS, uses nginx as a reverse proxy and PM2 as a service starter.
Everything seems perfectly configured.
What looks strange to me, is that I have a React application, in a similar environment, but, before to move it on the server, I run build it, so creating a sort of packed and not easily human readable application.
My question is: Is there the need to do the same with a node.js application?
And, in case of positive answer, How to 'build' a node.js application?
There is no need to build a normal nodejs application.
What you mean is the use of a bundler e.g. webpack and a javascript compiler e.g. babel. To create a react application, you usually use a tool like create-react-app that sets up all this stuff for you. For react you need the compilation beacause you use the jsx syntax that browsers do not understand. In addition to that a bundler has some more advantages.
Check out this video if you want to know more about it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IG4UmULyoA
No you don't have to build anything for node.js you just have to run the server. for client side apps you need to build and serve the Dist through web servers like apache or nginx.
From udemy React courses i could see Brad Traversy using create-react-app with node.js backend server and Andrei Neagoie using only create-react-app without node.js server to develop a full stack product.
I am seriously confused with when to use what?
Can any one explain me between these two scenarios? Please?
This is mostly related to how you want to structure your code. You can either :-
Set up your front-end and back-end code together. So, in your script tags in package.json, you will have something like 'nodemon server.js && react start' (refer package.json for exact syntax) to start both front-end and server with 'npm start'
Setting up front-end and back-end separately.
This is preferred for separation of concerns. In this case, you would start each separately.
Also, your front-end shouldn't be concerned about how your backend code has been written. It should only be dealing with backend using an API.
For ex: if in future, you wanted to change to Deno.js instead of node.js server, you would have make some modifications in package.json if you had front-end and back-end code written together in folder.
As far as deployment is concerned, in this case also, it will help if you kept the front-end and back-end code separately so you can deploy them separately.
React is used for frontend, while node.js is used for backend.
I think your confused because one is using react with node.js the other is using react alone.
Well React can be used for other backend other than node.js, like php for example.
This means you can create an app using react/php.
The reason Brad Traversy is using create-react-app with node.js because he wants to use node.js for his backend.
While Andrei Neagoie is using create-react-app without node.js because he either:
Don't want to use any backend.
He will add backend later on.
I am using angular2 with nodejs, how about using apache/xampp. will it support or nodejs npm server is mandatory for angular2
Considering for development ,NodeJS is Mandatory for angular2 !
let me tell you why?
Angular2 comes with typescript support which is transpiled into javascript.
NodeJS offers typings & other dependency packages like SystemJS,RxJS which helps angular2 do thye magic you call Angular.
Though you could run angular2 apps in Xampp but recommended approach will be with NodeJS as it offers a lot more flexibility & framework support for development.
for eg. Angular-Cli is node module which helps you setup your project really fast.
On top of that node gives you flexibilty to add third party libraries easily into your project.
You can use Xampp but then you will need your server to load transpiler manually which will transpile ts files into javascript files as currently there is no support in Xampp as far as I know and that will be quite a task to do.
So I will go with NodeJS on this.
For production:
once you build bundle from your application , it can be deployed to any server which runs javascript. So in that case NodeJS is not required.
It depends on what we are talking about.
For Development you must have NodeJS on your dev machine to load all libs, transpile TS, prepare build files and so on.
For Production server you can use whatever you want, if you have already prepared js bundles with all deps and your app, just static files with index.html, css, js, jpg files and so on..
I will also recommend you to go with Oleg Barinov.More over Angular2 applications only consist of static files so they can be serve by any static Web servers or server applications that can define static folders (Express, ...)
My understanding is that AngularJS including Angular2 is a client-side framework, while Node.JS is a server side platform. They should not cross. But all Angular2 tutorials I found use Node/NPM. Why is that?
Because npm is a package manager for packages written in JavaScript, and JavaScript can run both on client and server side. In other words, frontend and backend applications can both benefit from packages. Many development tools also use node as an underlying process (e.g. Jest-cli).
I would suggest you to use angular2 only on client side. The performance of angular2 really shines when it comes to handling view containers over regular server side codes. On the NodeJS side, I would recommend using es6 features. Which has revolutionised how you can not only code, but also performance.
The reason you see most tutorials using npm is because they are either using TypeScript or a build tool that uses Node to convert to ES5 or build your project.
However you can still build Angular2 apps using the sfx version (self-executing bundle) of Angular2 and using ES5 syntaxes without having to use node or npm. Here is a blog post that shows how to do that
http://blog.thoughtram.io/angular/2015/05/09/writing-angular-2-code-in-es5.html
Angular2 is a front-end framework but a lot of tooling that assists in building Angular2 applications are available via NPM.
If you want a package manager that's geared specifically to front-end development I suggest JSPM. It supports front-end modules of various formats (ie AMD, CommonJS, UMD), handles transpiling out of the box, and can be used as a build tool to concatenate/minify your application code.
You'll still need NPM for many other utilities and you'll need a back-end server for testing (I recommend live-server).
As far as the back-end is concerned. One of the Angular2 dev teams is working on a Node/Express extension that supports isomorphic rendering of JS. In short, it pre-renders the view on the server so the user can interact with it in the browser while the app loads in the background. The start time of launching a fully-featured SPA will still be kind of slow (relatively) but perceived speed will be instantaneous.