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I am a Django developer just getting started with adding React to one page of my app, and really enjoying it so far. (It's a normal Django app with a home page, an about page, etc, but also a "chart" page with an interactive chart, and I want to build the interactive part in React.)

The problem is that I've started with the downloadable React starter kit and I'm not sure how to do things the 'right' way, and it's complicated by using Django to serve my project (all the tutorials seem to assume you're using node, which I'm not).

Right now I just have this in my Django template:

<div id="myapp"></div>
<script src="/static/js/vendor/react.js"></script>
<script src="/static/js/vendor/JSXTransform.js"></script>
<script src="/static/js/myapp.js"></script>

And myapp.js has all the React code. I'm aware this isn't really the grown-up modern JS way of doing things.

Now I want to use React Bootstrap, but it seems that the only sensible way to do that is with npm. So it's time to make the switch, but I'm not completely sure how.

I have run npm install react and npm install react-bootstrap from inside my static/js directory in Django. This has created a node_modules folder with various files inside.

So three questions from a confused newbie:

  1. Where should I put my React code to work with these npm modules (should I use var React = require('react')?
  2. Do I need to compile this code somehow (using webpack?)
  3. How do I then integrate this with Django? Should I compile it all to myapp.js and just include that in my HTML template?
Richard
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3 Answers3

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I'm also doing the same thing right now - moving away from embedded HTML script tags into require land. Here is the tutorial I am following, and here is my file system so far. I am doing it in Node but it shouldn't be that different for a Django project as the React frontend code is decoupled from any backend other than API URL's.

Your node_modules folder contains react-bootstrap. In your myapp.js, use the require('react-bootstrap') to load up the library which is contained in your node_modules folder.

  1. Where should I put my React code to work with these npm modules (should I use var React = require('react')?

You can put the code anywhere. If your file system looks like this:

project/
  react/
    myapp.js
  node_modules/
    react source code
    react bootstrap stuff

Then you can just do var React = require('react'); in myapp.js.

  1. Do I need to compile this code somehow (using webpack?)

Yes, I would consult the webpack tutorial I linked earlier, it should explain how to compile all your React code into a single bundle.js. Here is also another good tutorial. This bundle.js file contains all the source code of your requires. So if your myapp.js looks something like

var React = require('react');
var ReactBootstrap = require('react-bootstrap');

then the bundle.js now contains all of the React and react-bootstrap javascript code, along with the myapp.js source code.

  1. How do I then integrate this with Django? Should I compile it all to myapp.js and just include that in my HTML template?

I've only done work on Nodejs, but my React code so far hasn't touched any Node code, and I don't think it will touch any Django code (again I've never done Django so I might be wrong). All you need to do is compile with webpack, which spits out a bundle.js. You put that bundle.js in your HTML and it'll load up myapp.js.

Keith Yong
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    +1, we use Django and do pretty much exactly this. We have a helper for our templates called `webpack_bundle` that either a) loads the JavaScript from a `webpack-dev-server` process in development, or b) loads the JS from a pre-compiled, minified JS file in production. – Michelle Tilley Apr 18 '15 at 05:29
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ReactJS code is still JS code. Even though you do require/import/other module based syntax when coding, in browser you will still load the JS code by a script tag.

The problem is how to let the script generated by webpack(bundle.js) to work with other 'VanillaJS' script. For example, if you only write an individual component using React, like a small table. And its data(props/state) will depend on another element/event written in VanillaJS, e.g, a click listener on a button render by django template. Then the question is, how they communicate with each other.

So far, the solution I know is:

when you write React Code, instead of calling ReactDOM.render explicitly with preset props/state, you can store that in a global function, the arguments could be the props. You load this script first, then the other script can use this global function to trigger the React render Component.

Kj Huang
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I'm using Django Rest Framework to build an API and then connect to that API from React (using simple Create react app), this way the front end and back end are separated and the application is very scalable. The second way to do this, is call create react app then run build and point your django settings to that react build, this way the front end is not separated from the backend. I hope this helped, good luck.

Mohammed Bouaziz
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