This example illustrates how:

• A single codebase can be used to generate server-side rendered HTML as well client-side interactivity.
• To pre-render HTML so that you can optimise for search-engines.
• Server-side rendering enables you to gracefully-degrade interactive features on clients without JavaScript enabled.

# In the /example directory

# Create a virtual environment for the example
mkvirtualenv django-react-example

# Install the project's python dependencies
pip install -r requirements.txt

# Install the project's JS dependencies
./manage.py install_package_dependencies

# Start the node server that we use to render and bundle components
./manage.py start_node_server

# In another shell, start the django devserver
./manage.py runserver

And visit http://127.0.0.1:8000

Note that the first request may take a while to render, this is down to the node server having to read the app's codebase into memory. The initial overhead will only occur on the first request, subsequent requests will be rendered immediately.

If you make changes to the app's JS codebase, the node server will detect the changes and perform incremental rebuilds so that when the next request comes in, everything is ready and immediately responsive.