Repack middleware

Simply way to use React on your apps, with ES6 syntax, and JSX syntax, and hot module replacement, and server side rendering.

Installation & usage

Frist, install the npm module

npm install repack-middleware

Configuration files

Create a webpack config file

module.exports = {
    output: {
        filename: "app.bundle.js",
        publicPath: "/build/"
    }
}

Add the middleware to your app.

var repackMiddleware = require('repack-middleware');

// ... include the middleware before other routes

app.use(repackMiddleware({
	configFile    : __dirname + "/webpack.config.js",
    componentsPath: __dirname + "/components"
}));

Include the bundled script in your html. The middleware will generate the bundle in memory and serve it on the publicPath specified in the webpack.config.js

<script type="text/javascript" src="/build/app.bundle.js"></script>

Usage

Create the main component:

./components/MainComponent.jsx
This is the view that is being called form the route

import React from 'react';

export default class MainComponent extends React.Component {
    render() {
        var myObjects = this.props.myObjects || [];
        var myStyle = {
            border: "solid 1px #0F0"
        };

        return (
            <div style={myStyle}>
                <h1>This could be React</h1>
                {myObjects.map( (obj, idx) => {
                    return <li key={idx}> {obj.size} {obj.name}</li>
                })}
            </div>
        );
    }
}

Now, in your route, call res.renderReact() to generate the insert html where the the react component should be inserted.

/* GET home page. */
router.get('/', function(req, res, next) {
	var myProps = {
        myObjects: [
        	{name: "User 1", size: 11},
        	{name: "User 2", size: 20},
        	{name: "User 3", size: 30}
        ]
    };

    res.renderReact('MainComponent', myProps, function(err, html) {
        res.locals.reactHtml = html;
        res.render('index', {title: "Hello world"} );
    });
});

And in the view (jade)

    != reactHtml

Note the != used to inject the variable in unescaped way.

Testing

• Start your server
• Go and modify something in either .jsx file
  Your browser should have received the modifications without reloading

Documentation

Config

Configuration options are passed to the middleware when it is created.

repackMiddleware ( options )

options

option	default	Description
configFile	required	The path to your webpack.config.js
componentsPath	required	The root folder of your components
productionMode	process.env.NODE_ENV == 'production'	when true disables webpack middleware and hot module replacement, your app must serve a pregenerated bundle
serverRender	false	enables server side rendering
elementId	"main"	The id of the div that will be created containing server side rendered html if enabled or empty (the node on which the React root component will be mounted)
generateEntry	true	generate a .startup.jsx that can initialize any component directly in the componentsPath folder
fullReload	false	force the browser to reload on changes (util when using material-ui library for example)

Note, if you enable server side rendering, and modify any of the jsx files, the server will continue to render the old component's html output, due to node's require cache system.

renderReact

res.renderReact ( componentName, propsObject, callback )

the propsObject should specify the initial props, these will be inserted in a <script> tag
to initialize the componentName with these props.

Callback signature

callback ( err, html )

This method is injected by the middleware in the res object to generate React html,
from there the html value, which is the rendered react html can be injected into
the view (unescaped, that depends on the view engine):