What's wrong with this ReactRouter.match() implementation? - node.js

Question

I'm trying to serve up React from my server via express.
The error I'm getting, though, when I hit localhost:3000 is:
TypeError: (0 , _reactRouter.match) is not a function
at /Users/chris/code/affordance/app/server.js:20:3
Here's the server.js file that does that:
import path from 'path';
import { Server } from 'http';
import Express from 'express';
import React from 'react';
import { renderToString } from 'react-dom/server';
import { match, RouterContext } from 'react-router';
import routes from './routes';
import NotFoundPage from './components/NotFoundPage';
// Initialize the express server, and tell it to use ejs
const app = new Express();
const server = new Server(app);
app.set('view engine', 'ejs');
app.set('views', path.join(__dirname, 'views'));
// Tell express where the static assets are
app.use(Express.static(path.join(__dirname, 'static')));
app.get('*', (req, res) => {
match(
{ routes, location: req.url },
(err, redirectLocation, renderProps) => {
if (err) {
return res.status(500).send(err.message);
}
if (redirectLocation) {
return res.redirect(302, redirectLocation.pathname + redirectLocation.search);
}
let markup;
if (renderProps) {
markup = renderToString(<RouterContext {...renderProps}/>);
} else {
markup = renderToString(<NotFoundPage/>);
res.status(404);
}
return res.render('index', { markup });
}
);
});
const port = process.env.PORT || 3000;
const env = process.env.NODE_ENV || 'production';
server.listen(port, err => {
if (err) {
return console.error(err);
}
console.info(`Server running on http://localhost:${port} [${env}]`);
});
So as far as I can tell, I'm importing it the way I see it used elsewhere (for instance, here).
I'm missing something, and I don't know what to guess or think next. What am I doing wrong?
ps - react-router is at version 4.0.0, docs for match are here

Answer 1

Your code looks correct if you used react router prior to v4, but react-router v4 has breaking changes throughout the codebase, including the method for server rendering. In v4, there is a new component specifically for server rendering - StaticRouter.
Your code should looks something like this with v4:
import path from "path";
import { Server } from "http";
import Express from "express";
import React from "react";
import { renderToString } from "react-dom/server";
import { StaticRouter } from "react-router";
import App from "./app";
import NotFoundPage from "./components/NotFoundPage";
// Initialize the express server, and tell it to use ejs
const app = new Express();
const server = new Server(app);
app.set("view engine", "ejs");
app.set("views", path.join(__dirname, "views"));
// Tell express where the static assets are
app.use(Express.static(path.join(__dirname, "static")));
app.get("*", (req, res) => {
// This context object contains the results of the render
const context = {};
const html = renderToString(
<StaticRouter location={req.url} context={context}>
<App />
</StaticRouter>
);
res.status(200).send(html);
});
const port = process.env.PORT || 3000;
const env = process.env.NODE_ENV || "production";
server.listen(port, err => {
if (err) {
return console.error(err);
}
console.info(`Server running on http://localhost:${port} [${env}]`);
});
Here is a really nice annotated article by EbayTech showing how to set up an app with StaticRouter(for server) and BrowserRouter(for client)