Connecting React and React Native with Express

Question

So I just started learning ReactJS and React Native.

I have some knowledge of MEN (Mongo, Express, Node). Up to this point, I learned how to res.render() files and pass objects in there.

Now what I need to do, is make MERN app. This app also needs to have Android and iOS version of it.

So far I learned that R stands for ReactJS, not react-native. Is there a way so it includes both? And where do I put react files when I have folder structure like from express-generator? Or is there a way they can be in completely different directories, and one calls the other via import?

Answer 1

It comes down to architecture I believe. The way I like to create the stack goes as follows.

You can create an API using Mongo/Express/Node that serves endpoints for your client app (created using reactjs, react-native and whatever other tech you want to include) to call using HTML requests. This would work for both mobile apps (using react-native) and desktop apps (using reactjs).

There's a couple different ways to deploy this. You can create 2 separate apps, a server app and a client app, which are both hosted individually by 2 separate hosts. This is useful because you decouple your front end code from your back end code. Also, you can have 2 separate directories for your code.

Another method of deployment would be to have your server serve your client files. This ones a little bit tricker, but you will be able to deploy your entire app inside 1 host so this option is also cheaper. I would suggest reading this article to figure out how to implement this and the file structure https://originmaster.com/running-create-react-app-and-express-crae-on-heroku-c39a39fe7851