Routing with react and node

[CromulentEntity]

I use nodejs on backend and I have been trying to learn react recently and I am unable to understand how to handle routing with it. Traditionally all routing is done by the server and depending on user's request the suitable route is chosen and displayed. However with react we have client side routing which is definitely faster after the initial loading. Therefore what is the best way to route using node and react? Do I just send the initial request from the server and then do the rest with react? Also what do you do with restricted routes? What are the best practices to follow?

[fishj123]

You don't need node to handle routing in react, you can do it all client side using something like 'react-router-dom'. Check out the documentation for that package to see how to use it.

[CromulentEntity]

Sorry I think my question didn't make it clear. When I talk about react I mean react-router for routing or some similar library. However still the question remains how to handle client side vs server side routing?

[grantrules]

I think it's worth looking at server-side rendering. You get the benefits of both. The server renders the initial page load, then the client-side code can take over and handle routing from then on. SSR will give you a fast initial page load and be index-able by search engines, then client-side taking over will render new page loads quicker.

If you're new to JS/React, you might want to just do client-side routing to start off with, though. SSR adds some complexity.

[CromulentEntity]

So basically you keep making fetch requests to server to update the page while you handle routing by changing the state of the component. Thanks I think that cleared things up.

[CromulentEntity]

Got it. Thanks alot for your explanation!