IsoReact ·

IsoReact is a collection of libraries to build isomorphic React components. Each edition of IsoReact focuses on a specific state management library. IsoReact-Bacon is the Bacon.js edition of IsoReact, supporting all versions of Bacon.js from 0.7.59 onwards.

Features:

• State management using Bacon.js.
• Connect state to the component tree via context.
• Asynchronously server-side render the entire UI with fully populated components, not just loading states.
• Hydrate server-side rendered components without hitting APIs for the initial client-side render.

Installation

npm i -S @isoreact/bacon

Import and build

Two modules are available for importing:

• @isoreact/bacon - this library's source (recommended)
• @isoreact/bacon/dist - prebuilt library using @babel/preset-env and default browserslist targets

A .babelrc file is provided to support Babel traversing this library in node_modules. If you're using Browserify, package.json contains a "browserify" field to instruct Browserify to use babelify and envify. This library provides all the required Babel and Browserify dependencies.

Important: When importing this library's source, ensure the transpiler converts all references to process.env.NODE_ENV into its value at compile time. This will happen automatically if you use Browserify.

Usage

Create a context to connect a Bacon.js observable to your React component:

// profile-context.js
import React from 'react';

export default React.createContext(null);

Create your React component hierarchy, connecting your context to it using <Connect context={yourContext} />:

// profile.js
import React from 'react';
import {Connect} from '@isoreact/bacon';
import profileContext from './profile-context';

const ProfileName = () => (
    <section className="profile__name">
        <Connect
            context={profileContext}
            isEqual={(a, b) => (
                a.isLoading === b.isLoading
                && a.name === b.name
            )}
        >
            {({isLoading, name}) => (
                isLoading ? (
                    <em>
                        Loading...
                    </em>
                ) : (
                    name
                )
            )}
        </Connect>
    </section>
);

const ProfilePhoto = () => (
    <section className="profile__photo">
        <Connect context={profileContext}>
            {({isLoading, photo}) => (
                <img
                    className="profile__photo-img"
                    src={isLoading ? '/static/img/profile-loading.gif' : photo}
                    alt={isLoading ? 'Loading profile' : 'Profile photo'}
                />
            )}
        </Connect>
    </section>
);

const Profile = () => (
    <section className="profile">
        <ProfileName />
        <ProfilePhoto />
    </section>
);

export default Profile;

NOTE: isEqual is an optional function that allows Connect to skip duplicates when it determines they're equal. It's a performance optimization, much like shouldComponentUpdate. It is used internally by skipDuplicates.

Define your component's event stream and make it isomorphic:

// iso-profile.js
import {combineTemplate, constant} from 'baconjs';
import {isomorphic} from '@isoreact/bacon';
import Profile from './profile';
import profileContext from './profile-context';
import fetchName from './streams/fetch-name';
import fetchPhoto from './streams/fetch-photo';

export default isomorphic({
    name: 'iso-profile',
    component: Profile,
    context: profileContext,
    getData: (props$, hydration, immediate) => {
        const userId$ = props$.map(({userId}) => userId);

        const name$ = hydration
            ? constant({name: hydration.name})
            : userId$.flatMapLatest(fetchName);

        const photo$ = hydration
            ? constant({photo: hydration.photo})
            : userId$.flatMapLatest(fetchPhoto);

        return combineTemplate({
            // React component rendered with this state as its props
            state: {
                name: name$,
                photo: photo$,
            },
            // Data rendered alongside the React element in the HTML page
            hydration: {
                name: name$,
                photo: photo$,
            },
            // Additional data accumulated during server-side rendering
            data: {
                maxAge: 60,
            },
        })
            // Start with a loading state (which is skipped by Bacon.js when combineTemplate resolves immediately) ...
            .startWith({
                state: {
                    isLoading: true,
                },
            })
            // ... but skip it if an immediate value isn't required
            .skip(immediate ? 0 : 1);
    },
});

The general contract of getData(props$, hydration, immediate) is:

• Return an observable that emits objects of the form {state, hydration, data} where both state and hydration are objects and data is any additional data you want to accumulate during server-side rendering.
• If the third parameter (immediate) provided to getData is true, the observable is expected to immediately produce an event.
• Events must contain hydration during server-side rendering.
• Events can contain hydration and/or data client-side, but it will have no effect.
• Keep hydration small to keep server-side rendered HTML pages small. Only attach the minimum amount of data required to hydrate isomorphic components without them having to fetch data from APIs.

Somewhere on the server:

import React from 'react';
import {renderToHtml} from '@isoreact/bacon';
import {IsoProfile} from './iso-profile';

// Server-side render an HTML page consisting of the profiles from a list of user IDs.
async function renderUserProfilesPage(userIds) {
    let maxAge = 60; // Default max-age to 60s

    // Generate server-side rendered profile of users
    const htmlArray = await Promise.all(
        userIds.map((userId) => renderToHtml(
            <IsoProfile userId={userId} />,
            {
                onData: (data) => {
                    // Keep the smallest non-zero maxAge
                    if (data.maxAge && data.maxAge < maxAge) {
                        maxAge = data.maxAge;
                    }
                },
            }
        ))
    );

    return {
        maxAge,
        html: `<body>${htmlArray.join('')}</body>`,
    };
}

When renderToHtml is called, it will call each isomorphic components' getData function, passing in a Bacon.js Property that emits the isomorphic component's props (in this case, userId) every time it's rendered. When the stream returned by getData produces its first event (an object consisting of state to inject into the React component and hydration to attach to the HTML page), the isomorphic component's React component will be rendered with the state as its props and the hydration data will be rendered adjacent to it in the HTML page. The data property of the event will be passed to the onData function specified in renderToHtml, if specified at all. It is up to the onData function to accumulate data objects as it sees fit, bearing in mind that onData is called in render order, which is defined by ReactDOM.renderToString.

Somewhere on the client:

import {hydrate} from '@isoreact/bacon';
import IsoProfile from './iso-profile';

// Hydrate all instances of iso-profile on the page
hydrate(IsoProfile);

When hydrate is called, it finds all the server-side rendered instances of the isomorphic component in the DOM, reads their attached props and hydration data, then calls getData(props$, hydration, immediate), expecting the client to render the profiles synchronously, without having to load data from APIs.

Bear in mind that isomorphic components are just React components, so you can use them directly in JSX and you don't even need to initially render them on the server. You could even use this library just for connecting to Bacon.js.

Contextless form

In some situations, context is overkill, because your UI is fairly shallow and there is not much benefit, if any, to be gained by using a context. And in some cases, you may be using a component from a third-party library as the copmonent parameter. For this reason, context is optional. If you don't provide a context, the state of the stream returned by getData will be fed directly into the component's props (which otherwise doesn't receive props from isomorphic).

import React from 'react';

export default function Profile({isLoading, name, photo}) {
    return (
        <section className="profile">
            <section className="profile__name">
                {isLoading ? (
                    <em>
                        Loading...
                    </em>
                ) : (
                    name
                )}
            </section>
            <section className="profile__photo">
                <img
                    className="profile__photo-img"
                    src={isLoading ? '/static/img/profile-loading.gif' : photo}
                    alt={isLoading ? 'Loading profile' : 'Profile photo'}
                />
            </section>
        </section>
    );
}

import {combineTemplate, constant} from 'baconjs';
import {isomorphic} from '@isoreact/bacon';
import Profile from './profile';
import fetchName from './streams/fetch-name';
import fetchPhoto from './streams/fetch-photo';

export default isomorphic({
    name: 'iso-profile',
    component: Profile,
    getData: (props$, hydration, immediate) => {
        const userId$ = props$.map(({userId}) => userId);

        const name$ = hydration
            ? constant({name: hydration.name})
            : userId$.flatMapLatest(fetchName);

        const photo$ = hydration
            ? constant({photo: hydration.photo})
            : userId$.flatMapLatest(fetchPhoto);

        return combineTemplate({
            // React component rendered with this state as its props
            state: {
                name: name$,
                photo: photo$,
            },
            // Data rendered alongside the React element in the HTML page
            hydration: {
                name: name$,
                photo: photo$,
            },
            // Additional data accumulated during server-side rendering
            data: {
                maxAge: 60,
            },
        })
            // Start with a loading state (which is skipped by Bacon.js when combineTemplate resolves immediately) ...
            .startWith({
                state: {
                    isLoading: true,
                },
            })
            // ... but skip it if an immediate value isn't required
            .skip(immediate ? 0 : 1);
    },
});

This saves you from the following additional boilerplate:

// NOTE: Don't do this!

const context = React.createContext(null);
const component = () => (
    <Connect context={context}>
        {(state) => (
            <Profile {...state} />
        )}
    </Connect>
);

export default isomorphic({
    name: 'iso-profile',
    context,
    component,
    getData,
});

However, it means that React is potentially diffing larger chunks of virtual DOM.

Hooks

A custom hook is provided as an alternative to <Connect />.

// profile.js
import React from 'react';
import {useIsomorphicContext} from '@isoreact/bacon';
import profileContext from './profile-context';

export default function Profile() {
    const {isLoading, name, photo} = useIsomorphicContext(
        profileContext, // same as Connect's context prop
        (a, b) => (     // same as Connect's isEqual prop
            a.isLoading === b.isLoading
            && a.name === b.name
            && a.photo === b.photo
        )
    );

    return (
        <section className="profile">
            <section className="profile__name">
                {isLoading ? (
                    <em>
                        Loading...
                    </em>
                ) : (
                    name
                )}
            </section>
            <section className="profile__photo">
                <img
                    className="profile__photo-img"
                    src={isLoading ? '/static/img/profile-loading.gif' : photo}
                    alt={isLoading ? 'Loading profile' : 'Profile photo'}
                />
            </section>
        </section>
    );
}

Refs

Refs work as expected. Any ref passed to an isomorphic component will be forwarded to the underlying component.

function SomeComponent({userId}) {
    const profileRef = useRef(null);

    return (
        <IsoProfile
            ref={profileRef} // ref forwarded to Profile
            userId={userId}
        />        
    );
}

The underlying component must be capable of taking a ref. Note: Connect is incapable of forwarding refs.

Support for styled-components

The server-side rendering portion of the above example can be updated as follows:

import React from 'react';
import {renderToHtml, StyledComponentsServerRenderer} from '@isoreact/bacon';
import {IsoProfile} from './iso-profile';

// Server-side render an HTML page consisting of the profiles from a list of user IDs.
async function renderUserProfilesPage(userIds) {
    // Generate server-side rendered profile of users
    const renderer = new StyledComponentsServerRenderer();
    const htmlArray = await Promise.all(
        userIds.map((userId) => renderToHtml(
            <IsoProfile userId={userId} />,
            {renderer}
        ))
    );

    return `<head>${renderer.getStyleTags()}</head><body>${htmlArray.join('')}</body>`;
}

This uses StyledComponentsServerRenderer as an alternative renderer, which uses ServerStyleSheet from styled-components to gather rendered stylesheets.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome. See CONTRIBUTING.md in this repo for contribution guidelines.