create-react-app-django VS django-sockpuppet

Yes. I have large portions of a server-rendered, stateful web application that leverages django’s view/templating.

However, being new to React I wanted to bring a single react “app” into the django project using a django template that includes the use of the same navbar template used by every other page in the site.

While it doesn’t support N react apps bundles at this time I could see it being done provided they share a single package file.

One important point for me was that this also be done using an unejected base CRA project, so that it would enjoy all of the benefits of the CRA standard dev and production build capabilities.

This was no small feat because I’m relatively new to modern web front end toolchains and in fact I ended up rewriting almost all of the user documentation for CRACO as part of my learning process.

Which is a key point I was able to accomplish this by using a mix of CRACO and options available to a standard CRA application.

In particular the package.json postbuild script action which moves and renames files to nestle assets into their proper place in a django static path.

I have not released my solution but I have stubbed out the problem and solution description here: https://github.com/banagale/create-react-app-django

The vast majority of applications are like that. You need some javascript, not a ton. If you need more than just a little bit of interactivity, you can use something like htmx or django-sockpuppet or any other number of things to get SPA-like interactivity without a dedicated frontend.

> Django with React IMO is getting the right blend of isomorphic rendering down. I don't want to go full SPA with Django as this defeats the purpose of Django IMO.

What we want from something like react after all is reactivity, and it's possible to get that if you were to use something like https://github.com/jonathan-s/django-sockpuppet

So if you've got an open mind and want to test it's there for the taking.