We are in the process of developing a fully functional social networking website that will resemble popular platforms like Facebook or Instagram. Our plan is to utilize Node.js on the server side and we are currently exploring the best technology for rendering view components on the server.
One major requirement for us is SEO friendliness, which makes Angular less suitable (although we are open to hearing arguments in favor of using Prerender.io).
Our goal is to incorporate AJAX support so that most of the rendering can be handled on the server while ensuring updates are carried out on the client side.
Although React appears to be a promising choice after our evaluation, there is one concern lingering - the default approach of loading all data at the route level instead of at the component level due to the synchronous nature of renderToString (as discussed here).
If we opt not to go with React, I am uncertain about a reliable alternative for server side rendering.
From my understanding, a potential straightforward method (which allows for async loading from sub components) could look something like this:
// Main page route
app.get('/',function(){
var html = renderBase();
renderHeader(html)
.then(
renderFeed(html)
).then(
renderFooter(html)
);
})
renderBase = function(){
return = "<html><body>..."
}
renderHeader = function(){
someIoFunction(function(){
// Build HTML based on data
})
}
It seems like employing a template engine such as Jade might ease some of the challenges, but I haven't come across much discussion on the topic of "React vs. Templating Engine," suggesting that I may be missing something important.
Thank you.