How is it possible to load external templates from the server during runtime with react-templates (or other reacte template system)?
I can't find any doc's about it but noticed that some people mentioned it as answer in SO questions.
Or should I just implement it my self and use the function "dangerouslysetinnerhtml" to inject the html?
What I want to do?:
Store html/css snippets in xml (or json), that is produced/managed by a CMS and load these in a react app. It makes it very easy to change the html, or support different languages without changing the code and making a new deployment.
I have an app running that is doing exactly that, that I have made with Google GWT, and I want to do the same in the react app.
Related
I want to create an MTurk HTML question that uses a modern web framework, such as Vue or React. For a minute let's assume I can't use an ExternalQuestion which just points to a website I create, but rather want to use HTMLQuestion.
Is that doable? Can I include React, for example, and it will work? Amazon's surrounding HTML will not interfere with it?
Yes, you can do this. Both HTMLQuestion and ExternalQuestion are rendered in an iframe when a worker accepts your HIT. As such, they're completely isolated from any other scripts or libraries on the surrounding page.
I am learning MEAN Stack. I started from learning Angular(from angular.io) now I am learning node.js and express.js
My question is, if there is angular for front end in MEAN Stack then why there are views and template engines in express.js at back-end? Are they alternative for each other or complements each other? what is the boundary for the role and responsibility of these two?
I am looking forward for someone's help in clarifying of my concept for role these two technologies(express' views and angular) used in mean stack.
In order to answer your question, let me explain what is angular and what are template engines in express?
What is Angular?
Angular is a platform that makes it easy to build applications with the web. Angular combines declarative templates, dependency injection, end to end tooling, and integrated best practices to solve development challenges. Angular empowers developers to build applications that live on the web, mobile, or the desktop.
what is template engine?
A template engine enables you to use static template files in your application. At runtime, the template engine replaces variables in a template file with actual values and transforms the template into an HTML file sent to the client. This approach makes it easier to design an HTML page.
Some popular template engines that work with Express are Pug, Mustache, and EJS. The Express application generator uses Jade as its default, but it also supports several others.
So,
Angular is a framework with a templating component baked in. You use it to create Single page Web Applications which means that DOM modification is happening on the client side and the app exchange with server only data. If your concern is template it is plain HTML.
Whereas, template engines' rendered views are sent to client each time by server whenever request is made each time a new page is rendered on server and sent to the client which is Great for static sites but not for rich site interactions.
If there is angular for front-end in MEAN Stack then why there are views and template engines in express.js at back-end?
This is because not every time generating views from angular is recommended sometimes it is better to use Template Engines to generate views and send the rendered page to a client, generating views at client side has its own pros and cons and generating views at server side has its own.
Generating views using template engines (i.e. at server-side):
pros:
Search engines can crawl the site for better SEO.
The initial page load is faster.
Great for static sites.
cons:
Frequent server requests.
An overall slow page rendering.
Full page reloads.
Non-rich site interactions.
Generating views using angular engines (i.e. at client-side):
pros:
Rich site interactions
Fast website rendering after the initial load.
Great for web applications.
Robust selection of JavaScript libraries.
cons:
Low SEO if not implemented correctly.
The initial load might require more time.
In most cases, requires an external library.
So, after knowing the pros and cons, you yourself can better decide that in particular case which one is better for you. Mean Stack has provided options for developers.
As far as your question regarding the role of these two technologies is concerned, Angular is a lot more view generator only, It has features like routing, it as services two-way data binding etc while the template engines are meant to render HTML so that it can be sent to the client.
I hope you will find this answer useful.
References:
what is the template engine?
what is angular?
pros/cons
Angular is a full-fledged front-end framework that comes with its own way of doing templating, using angular-specific markup in your HTML. If you use Angular as your framework, you're more or less stuck with their way of templating within the Angular portion of your application.
Angular Features
It is a framework written in Javascript language
Manages state of models
Integrates with other UI tools
Manipulates DOM
Allows writing custom HTML codes
It is meant for javascript developers to create dynamic web pages in a quick time
NodeJS
It serves the web
It is runtime built on javascript engine in google chrome
It can be considered as a lightweight server which can serve client requests in a more
simpler way than java does
It performs communication operation with databases, web-sockets,
middleware etc.
Why we use angular for Tempting not Express/Node tempting Engine
Server-side rendering is the most common method for displaying information onto the screen. It works by converting HTML files in the server into usable information for the browser.
Whenever you visit a website, your browser makes a request to the server that contains the contents of the website. The request usually only takes a few milliseconds, but that ultimately depends on a multitude of factors:
Your internet speed
how many users are trying to access the site and
how optimized the website is, to name a few
Once the request is done processing, your browser gets back the fully rendered HTML and displays it on the screen. If you then decide to visit a different page on the website, your browser will once again make another request for the new information. This will occur each and every time you visit a page that your browser does not have a cached version of.
It doesn’t matter if the new page only has a few items that are different than the current page, the browser will ask for the entire new page and will re-render everything from the ground up.
How client-side rendering works
When developers talk about client-side rendering, they’re talking about rendering content in the browser using JavaScript. So instead of getting all of the content from the HTML document itself, you are getting a bare-bones HTML document with a JavaScript file that will render the rest of the site using the browser.
This is a relatively new approach to rendering websites, and it didn't really become popular until JavaScript libraries started incorporating it into their style of development.
See Examples HerePratical Example
Basically template engines in Express are mostly used for displaying 404 and other server error messages. I find them ideal for such use cases. Using template engines for complex front end rendering is bad and not a good practice.
Express JS is a web framework on top of nodejs http module. Whereas Angular JS is a front end framework which doesnot depend on NodeJs server to run. Conceptually both are similar in few features like routing whereas implementation is different
This is more of question of if it makes sense to use Reactjs in my instance. I have an application that generates html serverside. I can not use any js based templating solutions serverside, it is a java/jsp solution blackbox.
Since the markup is already defined I am weary of using JSX to duplicate all the template logic currently only on the serverside. What is typically the best approach to integrating reactjs in to an application like this.
What will be the real advantage to using reactjs for me in this situation. Most of may app will continue to be rendered serverside go forward.
Obviously React is not designed to be used like this; but you could still do it.
Long story short: If you want to build something more complex in front-end you should do it; if you only want to get advantage of JSX templating instead of jsp, it's just a big overhead.
Advantages:
You will be able to step away from standard jQuery approach of handling javascript in .jsp.
You will get all the benefit of a client-side framework, so you are able to handle more complex scenarios in front-end as you would do with standard javascript.
You could hide some business logic in the java side (servlets) and making it available to React world.
Disadvantages:
Probably it's a pain to prepare the development environment mode (webpack, hot-reload, etc.); e.g. you'll need to recompile the jsp on the fly on every js change.
You can't use client-side routing (so you'll have like one SPA per page).
Probably it's really hard to make server side rendering work (for the React part)
In my angular application, back-end users can create custom templates. Those custom templates need to be loaded in the angular application at specific positions. I have a custom directive which gets templates
( based on the routes) from the CMS and inject it to my angular application. If I put it into the innerHTML the components will not get rendered correctly. I need componentFactoryResolver and compiler to properly show the components.
The above solution does not work with AOT compilation. Is there any other way I can achieve the same and make use of AOT? Is server side rendering is only solution to this?
Angular doesn't encourage using Compiler to create dynamic template.
Could/would/will code using COMPILER_PROVIDERS be supported by AOT?
But maybe in future it will be possible with without shipping the compiler because new View Engine open new capabilities.
Properties
the generated code relies on very few internals.
we can make the API public and stable
users could ship the generated factory files on npm
this makes calls to ngc in applications faster as it does not need
to compile the code of libraries like Ionic any more.
users could implement their own ViewEngine
this way we can drop the Renderer abstraction, as we already have an indirection via the ViewEngine
users could create templates programmatically during runtime
without shipping the compiler
eg for a dynamic form / ....
we might want to provide a builder for this that calculates indices correctly and can already be used in tests
we could create a new kind of directive that transforms a ViewDefinition, e.g. wraps elements into new ones, ... (similar to the compile in Angular 1).
needs some helpers that maps indices from new to original indices
Read more in Design Doc for View Engine
I need to add new features to an already existing application. The application is built using Lithium and jQuery. The features that needs to be included have a complex view which allow users to analyze data and perform CRUD functionality. I won't go into details about the features here, but after working on a few simple Angular tutorials and side projects, I know that using AngularJS to create this view will make my life a lot more easier than creating the view using jQuery.
Over the course of the next few months we may convert the entire app to AngularJS.
I am uncertain about where I should place the Angular files and how to setup routing. How can I integrate AngularJS to Lithium so that part of the Lithium routing works and part of it is handled by AngularJS.
I also found this answer on stackoverflow but it doesn't mention folder structures or how to integrate Angular with Lithium. I think this link mentioned in the answers is supposed to have what I am looking for but it doesn't seem to exist anymore.
The link is down, but you can clone the source repository and run it yourself here: https://github.com/nateabele/li3-angular-presentation
Regarding organization, the simplest way would be to place the directory structure for your Angular components inside of /webroot. The more advanced (and in my opinion better) way would be to make them two separate applications: an AngularJS UI app, and a backend API in Li3 that it talks to.