Different ways to connect react frontend and node backend

There are different ways to connect react frontend and NodeJS backend. In this blog, I am going to tell you three ways how you can connect the backend and frontend. These are the ways most developers prefer.

Prerequisites

• React and NodeJS

Let's get started

1. Single server

The first way is to have a single server that serves both Node API and React SPA under the same domain. Here data is still exchanged through JSON. As you can see in the above picture, all the routes which do not start with /api will be handled by React SPA. This is a simple way and you don't need to worry about those CORS errors🥶.

Here's how you can do it-

• Copy build folder files from react app and paste them in public folder of NodeJS server.
• Now server the static index.html which in the public folder

1app.use(express.static(path.join('public')));
2app.use((req,res) => {
3   res.sendFile(path.resolve(__dirname, 'public', 'index.html'));
4});

Pros

• Single server.
• No more CORS errors 😅
• Ideal for small applications.

Cons

• As both frontend and backend will be handled by the same server, you may face performance issues.

2. Two separated servers

Here we need two separate servers. One server serves static React SPA and another server serves Node API. Data will be exchanged through JSON.

Pros

• As we use two different servers for the backend and frontend, we get better performance.
• Ideal for bigger applications.

Cons

• Have to maintain two different servers.

3. Template engines

The third way and the least preferred way is server-side rendering with template engines like ejs, handlebars, pugjs etc... Here we don't create any REST API.

We render different HTML pages for different HTTP requests and react will pre-render some parts of the page.

This is not the preferred way to connect React and Node because we don't get the power of reactive user experience.

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So, what other ways do you know and what is your preferred way? Comment below 👇

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I hope you learned something new!