Developing a ReactJS application requires to use nodejs as back end server. What if you want to consume external APIs: how are you going to handle cross origin calls?

In modern days, as we are now, React JS offers many nice functionalities to develop an application easily, from any IDE.

In development mode, React JS requires NodeJS as a back end server. NodeJS maintains a connection between your development environment and your browser where the application is loaded so that:

• it refreshes automatically when an update is made,
• it sends in real time any error, warning that may have, in both the console and the developers toolbar of your browser of choice.

For production, you can compile your React JS application into static assets - you can then use any technology to serve those static files.

However, if your React JS calls external APIs (whether there are customs, or public) you will face security issues.

flask-reactize is a boostrap to serve any React JS via a Python back-end, using Flask as web framework.

Your back-end web server can be anything: Flask itself (although not recommended for production), Uvicorn, Gunicorn etc.

In a nutshell, flask-reactize is a proxy for your React JS application and for your APIs:

• It has a development mode: a nodejs server is transparently started by the Python back-end,
• It supports production mode: this back-end can also serve your static assets,
• It supports hot reload while developing: changing the Python code or the React code will trigger a browser refresh,
• It supports proxying multiple APIs via specific routes.

Here is what you are going to find in this repo:

• Under src/flask-reactize you will find the Python module (also available via PyPi),
• Under sample/ you will find a simple demo site built with React JS using flask-reactize,
• Two DockerFile for Python 3.8 and Python 3.10.

• vscode because you are going to use DevContainers to have all prerequisites without any hassle,
• Remote Development extension,
• docker

To experiment in a minimum of effort what this library is doing, follow the steps below:

1. git clone https://github.com/Azure-samples/flask-reactize
2. cd flask-reactize
3. run code . to open the repository in vscode (if the command is not available, activate it here).

Once vscode is opened, build the development container:

1. open the Palette (Ctrl+Shift+P / Cmd+Shift+P)
2. select Remote-Containers: Reopen in container

Once the container is built, your vscode is fully operational. If you open the terminal built in vscode, you will be prompted directly inside the container, as a "dummy" user called alex.

You can now build the flask-reactize container to test flask-reactize in either Python 3.8 or 3.10 version

1. run make docker-build-sample-py38 in the terminal for Python 3.8
2. OR run make docker-build-sample-py310 in the terminal for Python 3.10
3. then run make docker-run-sample to start the sample demo site

If running the commands above result in an access is denied for the file /var/run/docker.sock, ensure that your user is the owner of this file. If it is not the case, run sudo chown alex:alex /var/run/docker.sock in the terminal.

You can now open your browser and load the url http://localhost:8080.

This sample uses req|res test APIs.

Please note that you need to be on a *nix system for that, whether you are on Linux, Mac or Windows with WSL.

Instructions to follow can be found here.

You can deploy your web application on Azure following one of the following methods (non exhaustive list):

1. Using Web App for Containers,
2. Using a Web App,
3. Using Azure Kubernetes Service in a multi-scalable containers scenario.

Changelog can be found here.

If you want to contribute to flask-reactize, follow this guide.