---

Go-SSR is a drop in plugin to any existing Go web framework to allow server rendering React. It's powered by esbuild and allows for passing props from Go to React with type safety.

Go-SSR was developed due to a lack of an existing product in the Go ecosystem that made it easy to build full-stack React apps. At the time, most Go web app projects were either built with a static React frontend with lots of client-side logic or html templates. I envisioned creating a new solution that would allow you to create full-stack Go apps with React but with logic being moved to the server and being able to pass that logic down with type-safe props. This project was inspired by Remix and Next.JS, but aims to be a plugin and not a framework.

📜 Features

• Lightning fast compiling
• Auto generated Typescript structs for props
• Hot reloading
• Simple error reporting
• Production optimized
• Drop in to any existing Go web server

🛠️ Getting Started

Go-SSR was designed with the idea of being dead simple to install. Below are 2 easy ways of setting it up:

⚡️ Using the CLI tool

The easiest way to get a project up and running is by using the command line tool. Install it with the following command

$ go install github.com/natewong1313/go-react-ssr/gossr-cli@latest

Then you can call the following command to create a project

$ gossr-cli create

You'll be prompted the path to place the project, what web framework you want to use, and whether or not you want to use Tailwind

📝 Add to existing web server

To add Go-SSR to an existing Go web server, take a look at the examples folder to get an idea of what a project looks like. In general, you'll want to follow these commands:

$ go get -u github.com/natewong1313/go-react-ssr

Then, add imports into your main file

import (
	...
	gossr "github.com/natewong1313/go-react-ssr"
)

In your main function, initialize the plugin. Create a folder for your structs that hold your props to go, which is called models in the below example. You'll also want to create a folder for your React code (called frontend in this example) inside your project and specifiy the paths in the config. You may want to clone the example folder and use that.

engine, err := gossr.New(gossr.Config{
    AssetRoute:         "/assets",
    FrontendDir:        "./frontend/src",
    GeneratedTypesPath: "./frontend/src/generated.d.ts",
    PropsStructsPath:   "./models/props.go",
})

Once the plugin has been initialized, you can call the engine.RenderRoute function to compile your React file to a string

g.GET("/", func(c *gin.Context) {
	renderedResponse := engine.RenderRoute(gossr.RenderConfig{
		File:  "Home.tsx", 
		Title: "Example app", 
		MetaTags: map[string]string{
			"og:title":    "Example app", 
			"description": "Hello world!",
		}, 
		Props: &models.IndexRouteProps{
			InitialCount: rand.Intn(100),
		},
	})
	c.Writer.Write(renderedResponse)
})

🚀 Deploying to production

All of the examples come with a Dockerfile that you can use to deploy to production. You can also use the gossr-cli to create a project with a Dockerfile. Below is an example Dockerfile

FROM golang:1.21-alpine as build-backend
RUN apk add git
ADD .. /build
WORKDIR /build

RUN go mod download
RUN go get -u github.com/natewong1313/go-react-ssr
RUN CGO_ENABLED=0 GOOS=linux GOARCH=amd64 go build -ldflags "-w -X main.APP_ENV=production" -a -o main


FROM node:16-alpine as build-frontend

ADD ./frontend /frontend
WORKDIR /frontend

RUN npm install

# if tailwind is enabled, use "FROM node:16-alpine" instead
FROM alpine:latest
COPY --from=build-backend /build/main ./app/main
COPY --from=build-frontend /frontend ./app/frontend

WORKDIR /app
RUN chmod +x ./main
EXPOSE 8080
CMD ["./main"]

Go SSR has been tested and deployed on the following platforms:

• Fly.io - example app
• Render - example app
• Hop.io - example app