I am building a node.js app with express, I am hosting an Angular SPA in the public folder.
The app runs and the hosting works fine when I use the angular router for navigation around the website, but when I directly try to access the link, for example: http://192.168.1.4:3000/posts, the entire body of the website is just the JSON response object, without the app
this is the Node.js code handling the get request
postRouter.route('/')
.options(cors.corsWithOptions, (req, res) => {
res.sendStatus(200);
})
.get(cors.cors, (req, res, next) => {
posts.find({})
.then((post) => {
res.status(200);
res.setHeader('Content-Type', 'application/json')
res.send(post);
}, (err) => next(err))
.catch((err) => next(err));
})
this is my angular service sending out the get request
getPosts(): Observable<Post[]> {
return this.http.get(baseURL + 'posts')
.catch(error => { return this.processHttpService.handleError(error); });
}
Post Component .ts file
ngOnInit() {
this.postService.getPosts()
.subscribe(posts => { this.posts = posts, console.log(this.posts); },
errmess => this.errMess = <any>errmess);
}
Again, when i use my Angular 5 client app hosted in the public folder, built with ng build --prod, the JSON object is retrieved from the mongodb database and is displayed correctly on my website, along with the rest of the app, the header, the body, and the footer.
it might also be worth noting that the console.log on the ngOnInit() is not displayed on the browser when using the direct link.
Any advice/fix is greatly appreciated
You have a clash of routes between angular and your express application. Angular is served up on one route (I'm guessing the / route) and then it sort of "hijacks" the users navigation. It does this by not actually changing web pages, instead it just changes the URL in the navigation bar, but never actually makes a web request to get to that resource.
You've then got endpoints on a web server listening on those endpoints. This means the moment you visit the /posts page, you're not asking angular to do anything. In fact, angular isn't even loaded because that only gets loaded on the / route. Instead you're going straight to your API.
There are ways around this, to start with many people put their API fairly separately, either on a subdomain or mounted on /api (such as /api/posts). Then your angular app can be served up on the / route. There are other techniques you can use to then allow a user to go to /posts and still get your angular app loaded.
You can use a few approaches for this such as the hash location strategy, or you can serve up your angular application from any route on the application (* in express) and load the angular app which will then take over. This second approach is most comment, it usually results in hosting your api on a sub domain and then serving your angular app on the * route of the normal domain name. For example: api.myapp.com will serve only JSON responses, but any route on myapp.com will serve the angular app, such as myapp.com/posts.
Related
We made a late decision to implement social media sharing for Angular 7 project. As a first step of the re-write I wish to dynamically update social media tags for a particular route only ('/post/').
I am able to apply SSR on '/post/' using app.use in the server.ts file:
app.get('/api/**', (req, res) => { }); // ignore api requests
app.use('/post/', (req, res) => {
res.render('index', { req });
}); // successfully serves SSR content on '/post/' but client side rendering fails to take over.
app.get('*', (req, res) => console.log('Other routes')) // 'ERR_EMPTY_RESPONSE' error
I am running off localhost:4200 for both server and client - spinning up the SSR node server with npm run serve:ssr, and spin up the client side with ng serve.
I am unsure the best way to handle requests for different routes. How can I tell Node to skip other routes and to spin up Angular on the client side? Currently it returns 'ERR_EMPTY_RESPONSE' error on other routes and only provides SSR content for '/posts/' (no client side rendering).
I have a fully built node/express application that I want to add react to in order to practice that relationship in full stack applications. I've built apps in react before, and in node, but never together and I am confused about how react fits into the MVC architecture.
In a react-node full stack application does react state then handle all of the data I was previously passing into my ejs views?
I have been looking through tutorials on full stack applications with node and react, but they only seem to go into issues like how does react fetch data from the back end, or how to set up the configuration,
but I get that part, I just don't understand what react does in a full stack application, what part of the model-controller-view architecture of a node/express backend app does react take over? How are the responsibilities split between the backend and front end?
So for example, I'm working with a reddit-clone type app so when you click on a post title to see the post my controller queries the database for that post and then passes it to the view as {post}:
show(req, res, next){
postQueries.getPost(req.params.id, (error, post) => {
if(error || post == null){
res.redirect(404, "/");
} else {
res.render("posts/show", {post});
}
});
},
So when I add a front-end with react, would that {post} object then be something handled by react? So react would fetch that data and use it in a post component to create what is currently my view show.ejs file?
So when I add a front-end with react, would that {post} object then be something handled by react? So react would fetch that data and use it in a post component to create what is currently my view show.ejs file?
Yes. The show.ejs would be a React view or a page that contains a component to handle how to show it.
To simplify:
React -- is a virtual DOM, so it'll swap views/containers/components in and out based upon events (like clicking a button), which in turn, will: retrieve, display, manipulate and/or send data to the API. In development, it is completely separate from your back-end. All the routing will be handled by a front-end router package. In production, all of the front-end src code is compiled into a dist or build folder that contains your assets (images, fonts, css) and most importantly bundle.js file(s) that are then served by express.
Express + some database -- will act as your API where it'll CRUD data based upon the front-end request(s). If your app is a MPA (multiple page application), then a common practice is to delineate your back-end routes from your front-end routes with a /api/ prefix. In production, if express doesn't recognize the route (it's not a /api/ request), then it'll fall back into the front-end bundle.js file where it'll be handled by the front-end router.
See a working example here: https://github.com/mattcarlotta/fullstack-mern-kit (client is the frontend, everything else is the backend)
Or
See a working codesandbox (where I'm making a GET request to an API that returns json):
For your example above, your show controller will just be sending JSON (or a string message) back to the frontend (redirects will happen on the frontend via a router -- like react-router-dom):
show(req, res, next){
postQueries.getPost(req.params.id, (error, post) => {
if(error || post == null){
// res.status(404).send("Unable to locate posts.");
res.status(404).json({ err: Unable to locate posts });
} else {
res.status(200).json({ post });
}
});
},
You can even simplify the above using async/await:
const show = async (req, res, done) => {
try {
const post = await postQueries.getPost(req.params.id);
res.status(200).json({ post });
} catch(err) {
// res.status(404).send("Unable to locate posts.");
res.status(404).json({ err: Unable to locate posts });
}
};
And then the React front-end handles the response.
My setup is thus:
Node server running Express which runs an API.
Inside a subdirectory client is a Create React App project, with the proxy field set to the URL of the Express API.
I start both processes and access the CRA in my browser, which sends requests to the Express API through the proxy.
This all works fine.
In production, I will build the CRA and serve it from the Express app, like so:
app.use('/api/:controller', (req, res, next) => {
return router(req, res, next)
})
app.get('*', (req, res) => {
res.sendFile(path.join(`${__dirname}/client/build/index.html`));
})
My only roadblock is how to handle authentication. I could quite easily do an onload fetch request back to the API when the React app is initialised in the browser to see if the user has a session, but it seems like a waste.
In development (and I guess production for that matter), what would be a good way to 1) read the cookie from the incoming request and 2) pass on the currentUser object to the index.html above (in production) or to CRA in development.
To clarify, I was wondering if there are any specific CRA recipes for handling authentication from the server, before it sends the response back to the browser? (in this dual-purpose codebase setup)
Exact issue: In development, because I'm running yarn run cra, it's spinning up it's own webpack dev server, which serves the React app. So I don't believe I can really get at the request before it gets sent back to the browser.
I have an application which need to interact with UI and perform various CURD operation to database in the backend,
At present I we have a angular 1.2 application which have the UI and another node application and for every and the angular application sends http request to node application for every interaction needed, so here I have two different services.
I wanted to combine these operations into a one single service means UI(React) and node in one single service, like react inside node, when I start node server I should be able to access by UI also ,I am using express in node, what is the best way to do to use ReactJS with Node in a single service.
Hope you are using express along with nodejs. You could place the react application folder inside your node application folder in some folder named client. Then from node app you could do the following to server react files:
var app = express();
app.use(express.static(path.join(__dirname, 'client')));
After all the application specific routes to serve your apis, provide the following to serve index.html for all other get requests.
app.get('*', (req, res) => {
res.sendFile(path.join(__dirname+'/client/index.html'));
});
In order to execute http requests from a react application (it doesn't matter if you backend is node), I recommend using fetch api:
fetch(url)
.then(response => response.json())
.then(response => /* Do what you need with it */)
Axios also works quite good and provides the same result:
axios.get(url)
.then(response => response => /* Do what you need with it */)
.catch(error => console.log(error))
I'm building a node + react app that uses passport's facebook authentication. Getting this authentication to work involves hitting an express route '/auth/facebook'. Unfortunately as soon as the react app loads up react router 4 doesn't allow links to directly hit the express server and instead searches for a react route matching 'auth/facebook'. In short how do I link to a route within my application but outside of the react app when using react router 4?
React Router is only for client side routing. Use fetch API or a similar library for that.
I'll state one way of solving your problem (using fetch and without react router).
Remove the href from the <a> tag
Add an event listener for the click event, <a onClick={makeCall}>
Then in the makeCall function, you can call the backend using the fetch API(or axios or whatever),
makeCall() {
fetch('/auth/facebook', options)
.then((res) => {
// Something
})
.catch((err) => {
// handle error
});
}