React On Rails
Gem Published: https://rubygems.org/gems/react_on_rails
Live example, including server rendering + redux: http://www.reactrails.com/
See Action Plan for v1.0. We're probably feature complete and ready for v1.0.
Feedback and pull-requests encouraged! Thanks in advance! We've got a private slack channel to discuss react + webpack + rails. [Email us for an invite contact@shakacode.com](mailto: contact@shakacode.com).
Supports:
- Rails
- Webpack
- React
- Redux
- Turbolinks
- Server side rendering with fragment caching
- react-router for client side rendering (and server side very soon)
OPEN ISSUES
- Almost all the open issues are nice to haves like more tests.
- If you want to work on any of the open issues, please comment on the issue. My team is mentoring anybody that's trying to help with the issues.
- Longer term, we hope to put in many conveniences into this gem, in terms of Webpack + Rails integration. We're open to suggestions.
Links
- See https://github.com/shakacode/react-webpack-rails-tutorial/ for how to integrate it!
- http://www.railsonmaui.com/blog/2014/10/03/integrating-webpack-and-the-es6-transpiler-into-an-existing-rails-project/
- http://forum.shakacode.com
- Interested in consulting for a project using React and Rails, [email us! contact@shakacode.com](mailto: contact@shakacode.com)? You can first join our slack room for some free advice.
- We're looking for great developers that want to work with Rails + React with a distributed, worldwide team, for our own products, client work, and open source. More info here.
react-rails gem?
How is different than thereact_on_rails
depends on webpack.react-rails
integrates closely with sprockets and helps you integrate JSX and the react code into a Rails project.- Likewise, using Webpack as shown in the react-webpack-rails-tutorial does involve some extra setup. However, we feel that tight and simple integration with the node ecosystem is more than worth any minor setup costs.
react-rails
depends onjquery-ujs
for client side rendering.react_on_rails
has it's own JS code that does not depend on jquery.
Installation Checklist
- Include the gems
react_on_rails
andtherubyracer
like this and runbundle
. Note, you can sustitute your preferable JavaScript engine.
gem "react_on_rails"
gem "therubyracer"
- Globally expose React in your webpack config like this:
module: {
loaders: [
// React is necessary for the client rendering:
{test: require.resolve('react'), loader: 'expose?React'},
```
1. Require `react_on_rails` in your `application.js` like [this](https://github.com/shakacode/react-webpack-rails-tutorial/blob/361f4338ebb39a5d3934b00cb6d6fcf494773000/app/assets/javascripts/application.js#L15). It possibly should come after you require `turbolinks`:
//= require react_on_rails
1. Expose your client globals like [this](https://github.com/shakacode/react-webpack-rails-tutorial/blob/537c985dc82faee333d80509343ca32a3965f9dd/client/app/startup/clientGlobals.jsx#L3):
```javascript
import App from './ClientApp';
window.App = App;
- Put your client globals file as webpack entry points like this. Similar pattern for server rendering.
config.entry.app.push('./app/startup/clientGlobals');
- See customization of configuration options below.
prerender
shown below)
Additional Steps For Server Rendering (option See the next section for a aample webpack.server.rails.config.js.
-
Expose your server globals like this
import App from './ServerApp'; global.App = App;
-
Make the server globals file an entry point in your webpack config, like this
entry: ['./app/startup/serverGlobals'],
-
Ensure the name of your ouput file (shown here) of your server bundle corresponds to the configuration of the gem. The default path is
app/assets/javascripts/generated
. See below for customization of configuration variables. -
Expose
React
in your webpack config, like this
Sample webpack.server.rails.config.js (ONLY for server rendering)
Be sure to check out the latest example version of client/webpack.server.rails.config.js.
// Common webpack configuration for server bundle
module.exports = {
// the project dir
context: __dirname,
entry: ['./app/startup/serverGlobals'],
output: {
filename: 'server-bundle.js',
path: '../app/assets/javascripts/generated',
// CRITICAL to set libraryTarget: 'this' for enabling Rails to find the exposed modules IF you
// use the "expose" webpackfunctionality. See startup/serverGlobals.jsx.
// NOTE: This is NOT necessary if you use the syntax of global.MyComponent = MyComponent syntax.
// See http://webpack.github.io/docs/configuration.html#externals for documentation of this option
//libraryTarget: 'this',
},
resolve: {
extensions: ['', '.webpack.js', '.web.js', '.js', '.jsx', 'config.js'],
},
module: {
loaders: [
{test: /\.jsx?$/, loader: 'babel-loader', exclude: /node_modules/},
// React is necessary for the client rendering:
{test: require.resolve('react'), loader: 'expose?React'},
],
},
};
What Happens?
Here's what the browser will render with a call to the react_component
helper.
Usage
See section below titled "Try it out"
Helper Method
The main API is a helper:
<%= react_component(component_name, props = {}, options = {}) %>
Params are:
-
react_component_name: [string] can be a React component, created using a ES6 class, or React.createClass, or a
generator function
that returns a React componentusing ES6
let MyReactComponentApp = (props) => <MyReactComponent {...props}/>;
or using ES5
var MyReactComponentApp = function(props) { return <YourReactComponent {...props}/>; }
Exposing the react_component_name is necessary to both a plain ReactComponent as well as a generator: For client rendering, expose the react_component_name on window:
window.MyReactComponentApp = MyReactComponentApp;
For server rendering, export the react_component_name on global:
global.MyReactComponentApp = MyReactComponentApp;
If you're curious as to what the gem generates for the server and client rendering, see
spec/dummy/client/app/startup/serverGlobals.jsx
andspec/dummy/client/app/startup/ClientReduxApp.jsx
for examples of this. Note, this is not the code that you are providing. You can see the client code by viewing the page source. -
props: [hash | string of json] Properties to pass to the react object. See this example if you're using Jbuilder: react-webpack-rails-tutorial view rendering props using jBuilder
<%= react_component('App', render(template: "/comments/index.json.jbuilder"),
generator_function: true, prerender: true) %>
- options: [hash]
- generator_function: <true/false> default is false, set to true if you want to use a generator function rather than a React Component.
- prerender: <true/false> set to false when debugging!
- trace: <true/false> set to true to print additional debugging information in the browser default is true for development, off otherwise
- replay_console: <true/false> Default is true. False will disable echoing server rendering logs, which can make troubleshooting server rendering difficult.
- Any other options are passed to the content tag, including the id.
JavaScript
- Configure your webpack configuration to create the file used for server rendering if you plan to do server rendering.
- Follow the examples in
spec/dummy/client/app/startup/clientGlobals.jsx
to expose your react components for client side rendering.import HelloWorld from '../components/HelloWorld'; window.HelloWorld = HelloWorld;
- Follow the examples in
spec/dummy/client/app/startup/serverGlobals.jsx
to expose your react components for server side rendering.import HelloWorld from '../components/HelloWorld'; global.HelloWorld = HelloWorld;
Server Rendering Tips
- Your code can't reference
document
. Server side JS execution does not have access todocument
, so jQuery and some other libs won't work in this environment. You can debug this by putting inconsole.log
statements in your code. - You can conditionally avoid running code that references document by passing in a boolean prop to your top level react component. Since the passed in props Hash from the view helper applies to client and server side code, the best way to do this is to use a generator function.
You might do something like this in some file for your top level component:
global.App = () => <MyComponent serverSide={true} />;
The point is that you have separate files for top level client or server side, and you pass some extra option indicating that rendering is happening server sie.
Optional Configuration
Create a file config/react_on_rails.rb
to override any defaults. If you don't specify this file,
the default options are below.
The server_bundle_js_file
must correspond to the bundle you want to use for server rendering.
# Shown below are the defaults for configuration
ReactOnRails.configure do |config|
# Client bundles are configured in application.js
# Server bundle is a single file for all server rendering of components.
config.server_bundle_js_file = "app/assets/javascripts/generated/server.js" # This is the default
# Below options can be overriden by passing to the helper method.
config.prerender = false # default is false
config.generator_function = false # default is false, meaning that you expose ReactComponents directly
config.trace = Rails.env.development? # default is true for development, off otherwise
# For server rendering. This can be set to false so that server side messages are discarded.
config.replay_console = true # Default is true. Be cautious about turning this off.
config.logging_on_server = true # Default is true. Logs server rendering messags to Rails.logger.info
# Settings for the pool of renderers:
config.server_renderer_pool_size ||= 1 # ExecJS doesn't allow more than one on MRI
config.server_renderer_timeout ||= 20 # seconds
end
You can configure your pool of JS virtual machines and specify where it should load code:
- On MRI, use
therubyracer
for the best performance (see discussion) - On MRI, you'll get a deadlock with
pool_size
> 1 - If you're using JRuby, you can increase
pool_size
to have real multi-threaded rendering.
Try it out in the simple sample app
Contributions and pull requests welcome!
- Setup and run the test app in
spec/dummy
. Note, there's no database.
cd spec/dummy
bundle
npm i
foreman start
- Visit http://localhost:3000
- Notice that the first time you hit the page, you'll see a message that server is rendering.
See
spec/dummy/app/views/pages/index.html.erb:17
for the generation of that message. - Look at the layouts in
spec/dummy/app/views/pages
for samples of usage. - Open up the browser console and see some tracing.
- Open up the source for the page and see the server rendered code.
- If you want to turn on server caching for development, run the server like:
export RAILS_USE_CACHE=YES && foreman start
- If you're testing with caching, you'll need to open the console and run
Rails.cache.clear
to clear the cache. Note, even if you stop the server, you'll still have the cache entries around. - If you click back and forth between the react page links, you can see the rails console log as well as the browser console to see what's going on with regards to server rendering and caching.
Key Tips
- See sample app in
spec/dummy
for how to set this up. See note below on ensuring you **DO NOT RUNrails s
and instead runforeman start
. - Test out the different options and study the JSX samples in
spec/dummy/client/app/startup
. - Experiment with changing the settings on the
render_component
helper calls in the ERB files. - The file used for server rendering is hard coded as
generated/server.js
(assets/javascripts/generated/server.js). - The default for rendering right now is
prerender: false
. NOTE: Server side rendering does not work for some components, namely react-router, that use an async setup for server rendering. You can configure the default for prerender in your config. - You can expose either a React component or a function that returns a React component. If you wish to create a React component via a function, rather than simply props, then you need to set the property "generator" on that function to true. When that is done, the function is invoked with a single parameter of "props", and that function should return a React element.
- Be sure you can first render your react component client only before you try to debug server rendering!
- Open up the HTML source and take a look at the generated HTML and the JavaScript to see what's
going on under the covers. Not that when server rendering is turned on, then you'll see the
server rendered react components. When server rendering is turned off, then you'll only see
the
div
element where the inline JavaScript will render the component. You might also notice how the props you pass (a Ruby Hash) becomes inline JavaScript on the HTML page.
JavaScript Runtime Configuration
See this discussion on JavaScript performance. The net result is that you want to add this line to your Gemfile to get therubyracer as your default JavaScript engine.
gem "therubyracer"
References
- [Making the helper for server side rendering work with JS created by Webpack] (reactjs/react-rails#301 (comment))
- Add Demonstration of Server Side Rendering
- Charlie Marsh's article "Rendering React Components on the Server"
- Node globals
Development Setup for Gem Contributors
Initial Setup
After checking out the repo, making sure you have rvm and nvm setup (setup ruby and node),
cd to spec/dummy
and run bin/setup
to install dependencies.
You can also run bin/console
for an interactive prompt that will allow you to experiment.
Starting the Dummy App
To run the test app, it's CRITICAL to not just run rails s
. You have to run foreman start
.
If you don't do this, then webpack
will not generate a new bundle,
and you will be seriously confused when you change JavaScript and the app does not change.
Install and Release
To install this gem onto your local machine, run bundle exec rake install
. To release a new version,
update the version number in version.rb
, and then run bundle exec rake release
,
which will create a git tag for the version, push git commits and tags, and push the .gem
file to rubygems.org.
RSpec Testing
Run rake
for testing the gem and spec/dummy
. Otherwise, the rspec
command only works for testing within spec/dummy
.
If you run rspec
at the top level, you'll see this message: require': cannot load such file -- rails_helper (LoadError)
Debugging
Start the sample app like this for some debug printing:
TRACE_REACT_ON_RAILS=true && foreman start
Generated JavaScript
- See spec/dummy/spec/sample_generated_js/server-generated.js to see the JavaScript for typical server rendering.
- See spec/dummy/spec/sample_generated_js/client-generated.js to see the JavaScript for typical client rendering.
Linting
All linting is performed from the docker container. You will need docker and docker-compose installed locally to lint code changes via the lint container.
Once you have docker and docker-compose running locally, run docker-compose build lint
. This will build
the reactonrails_lint
docker image and docker-compose lint
container. The inital build is slow,
but after the install, startup is very quick.
Linting Commands
Run rake -D docker
to see all docker linting commands for rake. rake docker
will run all linters.
For individual rake linting commands please refer to rake -D docker
for the list.
You can run specfic linting for directories or files by using docker-compose run lint rubocop (file path or directory)
, etc.
docker-compose run lint /bin/bash
sets you up to run from the container command line.
Contributing
Bug reports and pull requests are welcome on GitHub at https://github.com/shakacode/react_on_rails. This project is intended to be a safe, welcoming space for collaboration, and contributors are expected to adhere to the Contributor Covenant code of conduct.
License
The gem is available as open source under the terms of the MIT License.
Updating New Versions of the Gem
See https://github.com/svenfuchs/gem-release
gem bump
cd spec/dummy
bundle
git commit -am "Updated Gemfile.lock"
cd ../..
gem tag
gem release
Authors
The Shaka Code team!
And based on the work of the react-rails gem