React on Rails approach towards SPA

Rails react_on_rails
1

Hi folks! On the main documentation on GitHub, you have this paragraph

Compare this to some alternative approaches for SPAs (Single Page Apps) that utilize Webpack and Rails. They will use a separate node server to distribute web pages, JavaScript assets, CSS, etc., and will still use Rails as an API server. A good example of this is our ShakaCode team member Alex’s article Universal React with Rails: Part I.

I was trying to understand the relative trade-offs in each of the approach so that I make a hopefully wise decision. I’d really appreciate some thoughts or insights?

@justin @alexfedoseev

2

@oyeanuj, the react_on_rails way heavily leverages the Rails ecosystem. The alternate approach is simply using Rails as an API server, and you’re on your own for the front end infrastructure.

For example, we’ll spend more time on the end-user functionality in React, and we’ll build admin functionality using plain Rails to save time.