Using React in a multi-page app
Currently, I am doing something similar.
The application is not a full React App, I am using React for dynamic Stuff, like CommentBox, which is autark. And can be included at any Point with special params..
However, all my sub Apps are loaded and included into a single file all.js, so it can be cached by the browser across pages.
When I need to include an App into the SSR Templates, I just have to include a DIV with the class "__react-root" and a special ID, ( the name of the React App to be rendered )
The logic is really simple:
import CommentBox from './apps/CommentBox';import OtherApp from './apps/OtherApp';const APPS = { CommentBox, OtherApp};function renderAppInElement(el) { var App = APPS[el.id]; if (!App) return; // get props from elements data attribute, like the post_id const props = Object.assign({}, el.dataset); ReactDOM.render(<App {...props} />, el);}document .querySelectorAll('.__react-root') .forEach(renderAppInElement)<div>Some Article</div><div id="CommentBox" data-post_id="10" class="__react-root"></div><script src="/all.js"></script>Edit
Since webpack perfectly supports code-splitting & LazyLoading, I thought it make sense to include an example where you don't need to load all your apps in one bundle, but split them up and load on demand.
import React from 'react';import ReactDOM from 'react-dom';const apps = { 'One': () => import('./One'), 'Two': () => import('./Two'),}const renderAppInElement = (el) => { if (apps[el.id]) { apps[el.id]().then((App) => { ReactDOM.render(<App {...el.dataset} />, el); }); }}
You can provide several entry points for the application in the webpack.config.js file:
var config = { entry: { home: path.resolve(__dirname, './src/main'), page1: path.resolve(__dirname, './src/page1'), page2: path.resolve(__dirname, './src/page2'), vendors: ['react'] }, output: { path: path.join(__dirname, 'js'), filename: '[name].bundle.js', chunkFilename: '[id].chunk.js' },}then you can have in your src folder three different html files with their respective js files (example for page1):
<!DOCTYPE html><html lang="en"><head> <meta charset="UTF-8"> <title>Page 1</title></head><body> <div id="app"></div> <script src="./vendors.js"></script> <script src="./page1.bundle.js"></script></body></html>JavaScript file:
import React from 'react'import ReactDom from 'react-dom'import App from './components/App'import ComponentA from './components/ReactComponentA'ReactDom.render(<div> <App title='page1' /> <ReactComponentA/> </div>, document.getElementById('app'))Different React components can be then loaded for each single page.
I'm building an application from the ground up and am learning as I go, but I think what you are looking for is React-Router. React-Router maps your components to specific URLs. For example:
render(( <Router> <Route path="/" component={App}> <Route path="api/animals" component={Animals}> <Route path="birds" component={Birds}/> <Route path="cats" component={Cats}/> </Route> </Route> <Route path="api/search:term" component={AnimalSearchBox}> </Router>), document.body)In the search case, 'term' is accessible as a property in the AnimalSearchBox:
componentDidMount() { // from the path `/api/search/:term` const term = this.props.params.term}Try it out. This tutorial is the one that put me over the top in terms of my understanding of this and other related topics.
Original answer follows:
I found my way here looking for the same answer. See if this post inspires you. If your application is anything like mine, it will have areas that change very little and varies only in the main body. You could create a widget whose responsibility it is to render a different widget based upon the state of the application. Using a flux architecture, you could dispatch a navigation action that changes the state your body widget switches upon, effectively updating the body of the page only.
That's the approach I'm attempting now.