React: rendering content (view) according to requested route (ExpressJS) - node.js

I have recently started learning React and am trying to make a simple blogging app. I store the data (post content, comments etc.) in MongoDB and would like to render the content according to the route, such as, when I have a certain URL (like /blog/:username), I'd pull data from the database and then render a view with the data content.
Using Express, I am now using static html files ( express.static) as the view, yet this makes it impossible to render the content according to the requested route, such as:
/blog/:username/:article
It is possible with a template engine, like Jade, but Jade, as far as I know, does not work with React.
What is the correct way to make dynamic views using React while preserving the URL route structure?
Thank you

Generally speaking, there are several ways to achieve your goal. I'll sketch the one that I feel is the most natural approach when using React:
Create your blogging app with React
Use a frontend routing mechanism such as react-router to make React aware of the URL
Either fetch the data for each blog entry from the backend via an Ajax call each time the user hits a URL, or store the blog entry data in the frontend (e.g. using something like redux) and reuse it when required.
Does this make sense? If not, please keep asking...

Related

What is Ejs , What is the use of EJS?

Can anyone please explain what is Ejs , can we build a full fledge frontend using Ejs while using node.?
I have been searching for it but i can not find the answer i want.?And please someone differentiate between the frontend frameworks like (angular and react) and Ejs..
EJS is a template system. You define HTML pages in the EJS syntax and you specify where various data will go in the page. Then, your app combines data with the template and "renders" a complete HTML page where EJS takes your data and inserts it into the web page according to how you've defined the template. For example, you could have a table of dynamic data from a database and you want EJS to generate the table of data according to your display rules. It saves you from the drudgery of writing code to dynamically generate HTML based on data.
EJS is compatible with Express for back-end use as it hooks into the View engine architecture that Express provides and lets you render web pages to the client with res.render() in Express.
FYI, there are dozens of competing template systems for use in node.js. EJS is a popular one and people typically choose one based on features that match your needs, how their layout language fits what you want to use, what seems easiest to you to use, etc... I've used Pug, Handlebars, Nunjucks and EJS. Nunjucks is my current favorite.
EJS (along with all the other competing template engines) allows you to generate full-blown HTML pages which certainly enables a "proper front-end".
EJS is a tool for generating web pages that can include dynamic data and can share templated pieces with other web pages (such as common headers/footers). It is not a front-end framework. While EJS can be used by client-side Javascript to generate HTML on the client-side, it is more typically used by your back-end to generate web pages in response to some URL request. EJS is not a client-side framework like Angular or React and does not dictate what client-side framework you do or don't use (if any). It is mostly covers a separate solution space.

Serve custom javascript to browser via Node.js app

I developed a small node.js app in which I can configure conditions for a custom javascript file, which can be embedded in a webpage, and which modifies the DOM of that page in the browser on load. The configuration values are stored in MongoDB. (For sake of argument: add class "A" to DOM element with ID "B" )
I have difficulties to figure out the best way to serve requests / the JavaScript file.
Option 1 and my current implementation is:
I save a configuration in the node app and a distinct JavaScript
file is created for that configuration.
The page references that file which is hosted and served by the server.
Option 2 and where I think I want and should go is:
I saves a configuration (mongodb) NO JavaScript file is created Pages
a generic JavaScript link (for instance: api.service.com/javascript.js)
Node.js / Express app processes the request, and
returns a custom JavaScript (file?) with the correct values as saved in mongodb for that configuration
Now, while I believe this is the right way to go about it, I am unsure HOW to go about it. Any ideas and advise are very welcome!
Ps: For instance I wonder how best to authenticate or identify the origin, user and requested configuration. Shall I do this like: api.service.com/javascript.js&id="userID" - is that good practice?
Why not serve up a generic Javascript file which can take a customized json object (directly from mongodb) and apply the necessary actions? You can include the json data on the page if you really need to have everything embedded, but breaking up configuration and code is the most maintainable approach.

Is there a way to load partial views from server side when using angular?

I am working on a single page web application and have run into a question for which I cannot seem to find the answer.
Is there a way to load partial views from server side when using angular? I am using nodeJs, with express and Jade, and wanted to load partial views into angular, but I am confused on how I would do such. Is there any particular guideline that I should follow to structure my files?
I do not want to load all of my partials from angular, so I wanted to know if there is a way to load the views in from node.
EDIT: What I mean to ask is, am I allowed to load in partial jade views on angular? Does that have any effect on the way the page renders?
You can't. Angular is a Single Page Application framework, it means that you application (ie HTML+CSS+JS) is loaded once at first load in the browser, and all what happens is a communication of raw data (JSON over REST for example), Angular is in charge of displaying correctly the already-loaded-html correctly according to these raw data.

Best way to handle Javascript rendering vs. Server side template [duplicate]

This question already has answers here:
Closed 10 years ago.
Possible Duplicate:
Reusing backbone views/routes on the server when using Backbone.js pushstate for seo/bookmarking
I am using Backbone.js and bunch of other modules to handle Single Page App method. My goals:
The site must be SEO-friendly
Server bootstrap html code to client and data stored in JSON models.
Sub-sequence actions are all handled by Javascript (e.g. render new screen, change url using Backbone router).
My question is: how to structure the server to align with Javascript on each router url and keep it DRY?
For example: if user goes to wwww.mysite.com and then click on some link to go to www.mysite.com/page/2, it must be the same as having him to go to www.mysite.com/page/2 directly on first load.
This seems to be an old topic but I cannot find any solid resource about best way to handle this on server side without repeating the template code in Javascript.
One option I am thinking is to split backend into Node.js and another server to handle API only. The Node.js server somehow share the template construction code as the Javascript frontend
Anyways, love to hear some advice and apology if this is not the right place to ask such question.
I would treat my node server as just a REST interface to my data. I would then handle everything else client-side: I could load templates using require.js with a template plugin like jade, do all my routing using Backbone.Router, and then access my models and collections using Backbone.sync methods (like collection.fetch().)
So for example, when a user accesses "mysite.com/#page/2", I could get my Backbone router to load and display whatever template would be on the page. If I happened to need a list of products to display on that page, then I could make my product collection do a product.fetch(). That would send a GET request to "/products" -- or whatever URL is specified in product.url. My node server would then respond with an array of product objects that the view my collection belongs to could use in rendering itself.

Ember.js on the server

I'm developing a very dynamic web application via ember.js. The client-side communicates with a server-side JSON API. A user can make various choices and see diced & filtered data from all kinds of perspectives, where all of this data is brought from said API.
Thing is, I also need to generate static pages (that Google can understand) from the same data. These static pages represent pre-defined views and don't allow much interaction; they are meant to serve as landing pages for users arriving from search engines.
Naturally, I'd like to reuse as much as I can from my dynamic web application to generate these static pages, so the natural direction I thought of going for is implementing a server-side module to render these pages which would reuse as much as possible of my Ember.js views & code.
However - I can't find any material on that. Ember's docs say "Although it is possible to use Ember.js on the server side, that is beyond the scope of this guide."
Can anyone point out what would be possible to reuse on the server-end, and best practices for designing the app in a way to enable maximal such reuse?
Of course, if you think my thinking here doesn't make sense, I'd be glad to hear this (and why) too :-)
Thanks!
C.
Handlebars - Ember's templating engine - does run on the server (at least under Node.js). I've used it in my own projects.
When serving an HTTP request for a page, you could quite possibly use your existing templates: pull the relevant data from the DB, massage it into a JSON object, feed it to handlebars along with the right template, then send the result to the client.
Have a look at http://phantomjs.org/
You could use it to render the pages on the server and return a plain html version.
You have to make it follow googles ajax crawling guides: https://developers.google.com/webmasters/ajax-crawling/docs/getting-started

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