React Server

The @state-less/clean-starter repository is designed to provide a starting point for developers exploring React Server. It includes essential backend components, utilities, and examples that illustrate the fundamental concepts and capabilities of React Server.

React Server allows the creation of server-side React components using TSX, promoting a component-driven architecture for building robust and maintainable backend solutions. By using @state-less/clean-starter, developers can quickly get started with this innovative approach to full-stack development.

For detailed documentation and in-depth guides, please visit the official website at state-less.cloud.

Getting Started

Backend

To get started on the backend, you can initialize a new project with the following commands:

git clone https://github.com/state-less/clean-starter.git -b react-server my-server

This command will set up a new project with the necessary dependencies and configuration files. Navigate into the newly created directory and start the development server:

cd my-server
git remote remove origin
yarn install
yarn start

This will launch the development server, allowing you to access your GraphQl endpoint at http://localhost:4000/graphql.

Client

Get a Client running

Create a new vite project and choose React as framework and TypeScript as variant.

yarn create vite

Now go to the newly created folder, install the dependencies and add @apollo/client and state-less/react-client to your project and start the server.

cd vite-project
yarn
yarn add @apollo/client state-less/react-client
yarn dev

If you click the button, you will see the counter increase, but if you reload the page, the counter resets to 0. Let's connect the state to our backend to make it serverside and persist over page reloads.

Instantiate a GraphQl client

In order to connect to our backend, we need to create a GraphQl client. Create a new file under /src/lib/client.ts and paste the following content.

import { ApolloClient, InMemoryCache, split, HttpLink } from '@apollo/client';
import { WebSocketLink } from '@apollo/client/link/ws';
import { getMainDefinition } from '@apollo/client/utilities';

// Create an HTTP link
const localHttp = new HttpLink({
    uri: 'http://localhost:4000/graphql',
});

// Create a WebSocket link
const localWs = new WebSocketLink({
    uri: `ws://localhost:4000/graphql`,
    options: {
        reconnect: true,
    },
});

// Use the split function to direct traffic between the two links
const local = split(
    ({ query }) => {
        const definition = getMainDefinition(query);
        return (
            definition.kind === 'OperationDefinition' &&
            definition.operation === 'subscription'
        );
    },
    localWs,
    localHttp
);

// Create the Apollo Client instance
export const localClient = new ApolloClient({
    link: local,
    cache: new InMemoryCache(),
});

export default localClient;

This sets up a new GraphQl client with subscriptions which will be used by the React Server client. The subscriptions are needed in order to make your app reactive.

Note: For now you need to manually create this file, but it will later be created by an initializer or react-client will provide a way to bootstrap the graphql client by providing a url pointing to a react server. For now you need to manually create and provide a GraphQl client.

Edit src/App.tsx

It's been a long way, but all that's left to do is import the client and useServerState hook and find and replace the useState call with a useServerState call.

import { useServerState } from '@state-less/react-client';
import client from './lib/client';

// ...

const [count, setCount] = useServerState(0, {
    key: 'count',
    scope: 'global',
    client,
});

If you don't want to pass a client object to each query, you can wrap your application in an <Apolloprovider client={client} />. React Server will use the provided client. Note: You can still override the provided client if you pass one in the options

That's it, your App is now powered by the same backend as the documentation under state-less.cloud.

Happy Hacking!