News

ShakaCode now maintains the official successor to rails/webpacker, shakapacker.
Project is updated to support Rails 7 and Shakapacker v6+!

These are the docs for React on Rails 13. To see the older docs: v12 and v11.

About

React on Rails integrates Rails with (server rendering of) Facebook's React front-end framework.

This project is maintained by the software consulting firm ShakaCode. We focus on Ruby on Rails applications with React front-ends, often using TypeScript or ReScript (ReasonML). We also build React Native apps and Gatsby sites. See our recent work for examples of what we do. ShakaCode.com (HiChee.com) is hiring developers that like working on open-source.

Are you interested in optimizing your webpack setup for React on Rails including code splitting with react-router and loadable-components with server-side rendering for SEO and hot-reloading for developers? We did this for Popmenu, lowering Heroku costs 20-25% while getting a 73% decrease in average response times. Several years later, Popmenu is serving millions of SSR requests per day with React on Rails.

Check out React on Rails Pro. For more information, feel free to contact Justin Gordon, justin@shakacode.com, maintainer of React on Rails.

Documentation

See the documentation at shakacode.com/react-on-rails/docs.

Project Objective

To provide a high performance framework for integrating Ruby on Rails with React via the Webpacker gem, especially regarding React Server-Side Rendering for better SEO and improved performance.

Features and Why React on Rails?

Given that rails/webpacker gem already provides basic React integration, why would you use "React on Rails"?

Automatic configuration of what bundles are added to the page based on what React components are on the page. This results in faster browser loading time via smaller bundle sizes.
Keep up with the latest changes of different versions of React. React 18 is supported.
Easy passing of props directly from your Rails view to your React components rather than having your Rails view load and then make a separate request to your API. Tight integration with shakapacker (or it's predecessor rails/webpacker).
Server-Side Rendering (SSR), often used for SEO crawler indexing and UX performance.
Automated optimized entry-point creation and bundle inclusion when placing a component on a page. With this feature, you no longer need to configure javascript_pack_tags and stylesheet_pack_tags on your layouts based on what’s shown. “It just works!”
Redux and React Router integration with server-side-rendering.
Internationalization (I18n) and (localization)
A supportive community. This web search shows how live public sites are using React on Rails.
ReScript Support.

See Rails/Webpacker React Integration Options for comparisons to other gems.

Online demo

See the react-webpack-rails-tutorial for an example of a live implementation and code.
A deployed version of the project spec/dummy which demonstrates several uses of react_on_rails is available on heroku through this link

ShakaCode Forum Premium Content

Requires creating a free account.

Prerequisites

Ruby on Rails >=5, rails/webpacker >= 4.2 or shakapacker > 6, Ruby >= 2.7

Support

Click to join React + Rails Slack.

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See NEWS.md for more notes over time.
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