RenderReact

A lo-fi way to render client- and server-side React components from Ruby:

class ExampleComponent extends React.Component {
  render() {
    return <marquee>Hello Ruby { this.props.example }</marquee>
  }
}

RenderReact.on_client_and_server("ExampleComponent", { example: "!" })
# =>
<div id="RenderReact-caac405e-1714-495e-aeb4-77b42be42291">
  <marquee data-reactroot="" data-reactid="1" data-react-checksum="441921122">
    <!-- react-text: 2 -->Hello Ruby <!-- /react-text --><!-- react-text: 3 -->!<!-- /react-text -->
  </marquee>
</div>
<script>
  RenderReact.ReactDOM.render(
    RenderReact.React.createElement(
      RenderReact.components.ExampleComponent, {"example":"!"}
    ),
    document.getElementById('RenderReact-caac405e-1714-495e-aeb4-77b42be42291')
  )
</script>

It is bring your own tooling: React is not included, nor any ES6 transpilers or module bundlers. It expects you to prepare the JavaScript bundle file in a specific format, which must contain React and all of your components.

If you are looking for higher-level alternatives, checkout react_on_rails or react-rails.

Setup

Add to your Gemfile:

gem 'render_react'

JavaScript Source Preparation

RenderReact expects the JavaScript bundle to include a global variable called RenderReact with the following contents:

{
  React: [variable which contains React],
  ReactDOM: [variable which contains ReactDOM],
  ReactDOMServer: [variable which contains ReactDOMServer],
  components: {
    ComponentIdentifier1: [variable which contains the component 1],
    ComponentIdentifier2: [variable which contains the component 2],
    ...
  }
}

• Where is React? See first paragraph of https://facebook.github.io/react/docs/react-api.html
• Where is ReactDOM? See first paragraph of https://facebook.github.io/react/docs/react-dom.html
• Where is ReactDOMServer? See first paragraph of https://facebook.github.io/react/docs/react-dom-server.html

You can have two different javascript bundle files - one for server rendering, and one for client-rendering.

• The client bundle has to be included into your application by a method of your choice. You may skip passing in ReactDOMServer for the client bundle
• The server bundle has to be passed to RenderReact (see Usage section). You may skip passing in ReactDOM for the server bundle

Example (With ES6 Modules)

import React from 'react'
import ReactDOM from 'react-dom'
import ReactDOMServer from 'react-dom/server'

import ExampleComponent from './components/example_component'

export default {
  React: React,
  ReactDOM: ReactDOM,
  ReactDOMServer: ReactDOMServer,
  components: {
    ExampleComponent: ExampleComponent
  }
}

Gets imported as RenderReact

Example (With Browser Globals)

window.RenderReact = {
  React: React,
  ReactDOM: ReactDOM,
  ReactDOMServer: ReactDOMServer,
  components: {
    ExampleComponent: ExampleComponent
  }
}

Usage

Create a RenderReact context by passing your server-side JavaScript bundle:

RenderReact.create_context! File.read('path/to/your/server-bundle.js'), mode: :client_and_server

You can use it without a server-side bundle by not passing any file source.

The optional mode: keyword argument can have one of the following values

• :client_and_server (default) - component will be rendered server-side and mounted in the client
• :client - component will be mounted in the client
• :server - component will be render statically

You can then render a component with

RenderReact.("ExampleComponent", { example: "prop" })

It is possible to overwrite the context-rendering-mode by using specfic render methods:

RenderReact.on_client_and_server("ExampleComponent") # server- and client-side
RenderReact.on_client("ExampleComponent") # only client-side
RenderReact.on_server("ExampleComponent") # only static

MIT License

Copyright (C) 2017 Jan Lelis https://janlelis.com. Released under the MIT license.

React is BSD licensed.