Using ReactJS with NodeJS - node.js

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))

Related

Connect express backend to React frontend (in the same server if possible)

I saw a lot of ways to connect React frontend to express backend (REST API) and i don't understand which one of the them is the most common, organized and friendly. (Axios, componentDidMount function and so on..).
My project divide to backend and frontend libraries which includes a connection to mongoDB in the backend.
I am new to React so i will appreciate any recommendation.
You can easily have both on the same server, all you need to do is. Make an express route that servers your react app's index.html.
app.get('/', (req, res) => {
res.sendFile('./public/index.html');
});
Also, don't forget to serve your static files (css, fonts, etc) using express's own middleware.
app.use(express.static('public'));
After you have done that, you can have your API at /api.

Applying SSR / social media sharing to selected routes in Angular 7

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).

Node.js / Express.js + Angular router - server overwriting client view with response object when using direct link

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.

Create React App with Express API cookie authentication

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.

create-react-app with Express

I need to query a database and I'm using create-react-app. The library to connect to the DB (pg-promise) does not work with Webpack and needs to be running on a Node server.
So I installed Express and have this:
app.get('*', (req, res) => {
res.sendFile(path.resolve(__dirname, '..', 'build', 'index.html'));
})
How can I load data from the database from the React pages? I though of using request but how can I make a request to my own server? And what should I add to the lines of code above? I think it would be something like:
app.get('/query/:querybody', (req, res) => {
// process and return query
})
Is this right? How can I make it work with a SPA?
Probably the most friction-free method would be to have a separate app.js or server.js along side your CRA application. You can use a tool like concurrently to run both your React app and the express app.
The trick is to serve your express app on a different port than the default :8080 that CRA serves on. Usually 8081 is a good choice, as it's a common convention to use port numbers that are close together when developing.
In your React app, you will need to make sure you use the full URL for the express endpoint: http://localhost:8081/query/...
On the server side you are going in the correct direction: you need to setup endpoint which will respond with data based on request. In you example you setup an endpoint for a GET HTTP request. If you will need to pass a complex request (for example add new record to database), consider using POST HTTP requests.
On the client side (in the browser) you will need a library that will assist you in sending requests to your server. I can recommend to try Axios (https://github.com/mzabriskie/axios). Usually if you omit protocol, server name and port, request will be sent to the server from which the page was loaded:
http:127.0.0.1:8001/api/endpoint => /api/endpoint

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