React SSR with Express: Beginners Tutorial
If you’re new to React, you may have heard of server-side rendering (SSR) and wondered what it is and how it can benefit your web applications. In this beginner’s tutorial, we’ll explore React SSR with Express and how you can implement it in your projects.
What is React SSR?
SSR is the process of rendering a web page on the server and sending the fully rendered HTML to the client. This has several benefits, including improved performance, search engine optimization, and better support for users with slow internet connections or disabled JavaScript.
Setting up a React SSR project with Express
To get started with React SSR, you’ll need to have Node.js and npm installed on your machine. Once you have those dependencies set up, you can create a new project directory and install the necessary packages:
$ mkdir react-ssr-project
$ cd react-ssr-project
$ npm init -y
$ npm install express react react-dom
After installing the packages, you can create an index.js file in your project directory and set up a basic Express server that will handle SSR:
const express = require('express');
const React = require('react');
const ReactDOMServer = require('react-dom/server');
const App = require('./App');
const app = express();
app.get('/', (req, res) => {
const html = ReactDOMServer.renderToString(React.createElement(App));
res.send(`
`);
});
app.listen(3000, () => {
console.log('Server is running on port 3000');
});
In this example, we’re creating a basic Express server that renders the App component using ReactDOMServer.renderToString() and sends the fully rendered HTML to the client when they make a request to the root URL.
Creating a basic React component
Now that we have our Express server set up, we can create a basic React component that will be rendered on the server and sent to the client. Create a new file called App.js in your project directory:
import React from 'react';
const App = () => {
return (
Hello, React SSR!
This is a basic React component rendered on the server.
);
};
export default App;
With our basic React component in place, we can start the Express server by running the following command:
$ node index.js
Now, if you open your browser and navigate to http://localhost:3000, you should see the fully rendered HTML of the App component displayed on the page.
Conclusion
Congratulations! You’ve just set up a basic React SSR project with Express. While this tutorial covers the fundamentals of React SSR, there’s much more to explore, including data fetching, routing, and integrating with other libraries and frameworks. We hope this beginner’s tutorial has provided you with a solid foundation to start building SSR-enabled web applications with React and Express.
With love from Russia, men! Thank you
Very simple and clear explanation. Thank you