Server-side rendering in Create React App

SSR with all the goodies, without ejecting.

• Link to Tutorial
• Deployed application
• Github Gist for server folder

Goals

• Zero modifications to your existing CRA application
• Create React App without ejecting
• React 16 (fiber, baby!)
• React Router v4 (with Thunk)
• Full SEO support via React Helmet
• Preloaded page data via async/await and React Frontload
• Code splitting via React Loadable
• Server-side cookie support

Examples

• Multiple pages (/, /about)
• User-specific pages with preloaded data set on a timeout to fake an API call (/profile/1, /profile/2)
• Basic authentication with cookie storage (/login, /dashboard, /logout)
• Not found (404, etc.) page

Installation

1. Install dependencies via yarn install
2. To run locally, use yarn start
3. To run under SSR mode, use yarn build && yarn serve

Why?

Server-side rendering is a requirement for many modern web applications to appear correctly in search engines and social media parsers.

Question: Have you ever created a web application with multiple pages only to find out that your meta descriptions weren't page specific?
Answer: Server-side rendering

Question: Have you ever created a web application where users had individual profile pages that required pre-loading of metadata?
Answer: Server-side rendering

Question: Have you ever created a web application with a lot of content on your page that ends up taking a long time for your users to load in poor Internet conditions?
Answer: Server-side rendering

Contribute

Do what you normally do - fork and PR.