React SSR with Express 🚀

This project renders React pages and components directly from the Server so it increases SEO and general performance from the client browser point of view.

Tech Stack:

• React & Redux
• Node & Express
• SCSS
• Jest & react-test-renderer

How to use 🛠

Clone the project and run npm install to install all needed dependencies.

After that, run the command npm run dev so a new dist folder is build with all the bundled files from both the server and the client. You'll have a server running in the PORT specified in the .env file.

All changes made into any part of the code will trigger a webpack watcher so after reloading you'll be able to see the changes applied directly to the DOM.

This project can be deployed in a server instance. You can check out how it's using Redux, SCSS and some modern features applied through Babel plugins. It's consuming Rick and Morty API to show characters in a simple way so you can check how pagination, filtering and server load through params work 😎.

You can check it out in Heroku

Future improvements:

• Add Hot Reloading for the client side code so development experience is improved. I tried to add it but due to the server listening to changes through nodemon when developing the debugging was getting too long and confusing. Will try again in the future. 🔮

• Implement data caching and preload some endpoints using server custom endpoints (like Next.js does).

• Test and improve bundle splitting though hash names, needs some server work using a webpack plugin to register all names for every entrypoint file in a new JSON file.