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If I can ask a somewhat ignorant question... is there no way to render a traditional HTML page from a normal (Django/Rails/PHP-style) server-side template, and

by geofft 8y ago

If I can ask a somewhat ignorant question... is there no way to render a traditional HTML page from a normal (Django/Rails/PHP-style) server-side template, and then add React on top for interactivity? Is it that everything has to be built in React and it can't work with exising DOM elements? or just that it's easier to do everything in React and not have a separate static template, or something? Is the answer any different for React Native? (I guess you lack a server-side renderer at that point, so maybe it's easier to plan to do everythig in React if you plan on using React Native?)

mharroun 8y ago
This is a way to go in many use cases. This though doesn't work super well if the same content/components in some contexts/pages needs to be rendered on the client side and in other cases needs to be rendered server side.
acemarke 8y ago
You can absolutely add React piecemeal to an existing page. That's actually how Facebook does it. You just call `ReactDOM.render()` multiple times, with different target parent nodes. I'm doing it at work in an app that's still 80% Backbone. We're replacing Backbone Views piecemeal, with each chunk becoming a separate React component tree [0]. It's certainly easier if it's all one big React app from page load, though. I haven't used React Native myself, but I _think_ you can use RN in a similar way. I think I remember reading that the Facebook app uses RN for certain pages, but not others. [0] https://blog.isquaredsoftware.com/2017/07/react-redux-backbone-integration/ https://blog.isquaredsoftware.com/2017/07/react-redux-backbo...
scaryclam 8y ago
Yep, and this is actually the method I'd recommend for a variety of reasons. When we were looking for a modern framework for a project a while ago, the ability to do this was actually one of the main reasons we gave react the thumbs up.

by geofft 8y ago

mharroun 8y ago

This is a way to go in many use cases. This though doesn't work super well if the same content/components in some contexts/pages needs to be rendered on the client side and in other cases needs to be rendered server side.

acemarke 8y ago

You can absolutely add React piecemeal to an existing page. That's actually how Facebook does it. You just call `ReactDOM.render()` multiple times, with different target parent nodes. I'm doing it at work in an app that's still 80% Backbone. We're replacing Backbone Views piecemeal, with each chunk becoming a separate React component tree [0]. It's certainly easier if it's all one big React app from page load, though. I haven't used React Native myself, but I _think_ you can use RN in a similar way. I think I remember reading that the Facebook app uses RN for certain pages, but not others. [0] https://blog.isquaredsoftware.com/2017/07/react-redux-backbone-integration/ https://blog.isquaredsoftware.com/2017/07/react-redux-backbo...

scaryclam 8y ago

Yep, and this is actually the method I'd recommend for a variety of reasons. When we were looking for a modern framework for a project a while ago, the ability to do this was actually one of the main reasons we gave react the thumbs up.