DEV Community

Building a Web App With Go, Gin and React

Francis Sunday on April 21, 2018

This article was originally posted on My Blog TL;DR: In this tutorial, I'll show you how easy it is to build a web application with Go and the G...

Read full post

Agrim Prasad • Apr 24 '18 • Edited

Many thanks for this great blog post!

We've been using Gin as our web framework in production, and while it holds up very well under high load, we've seen some issues with the router used within the framework. The issue is detailed in github.com/gin-gonic/gin/issues/388

In brief, if you have two routes defined as follows, you'll see a runtime panic :

r.GET("/teachers/list", func (c *gin.Context){})
r.GET("/teachers/:id/profile", func (c *gin.Context){})

This is because gin's built-in router (based on httprouter) can't handle such wildcard based routing properly. As a result, RESTful services are difficult to define around resource names.

I've been exploring alternatives to using gin, and it seems like go-chi is the most simple and idiomatic router around. It could successfully handle such wildcard based routing. Furthermore, it uses the native Go context object (rather than Gin's custom context object), and its middlewares and handlers are portable across other routing libraries such as gorilla/mux (in case you want to change in the future).

Some comparisons between simple Go http routers made by me in this repo

Cristopher Palacios • Jul 8 '18 • Edited

I had an issue and is the next:

"Error parsing token: Invalid issuer."

I followed all the steps and I don't have a clue what could be my problem, I made the right configuration on auth0 and I got all the right credencial from it, Any advise?

I new in all these (Go,Gin and React)! and this post is the best that I have found so far!

Thanks for the time you took it to make it!

Francis Sunday • Jul 13 '18

Hello there Christopher! Glad you checked out the article.

The error message, That's coming from the method that validates the token sent from the Auth0 client. Confirm you have the .env file setup and source on runtime with the Go server

Justin Blau • Jul 30 '18

Hello, I ran into this same issue. The solution on my side was that although on the Auth0 site the domain is listed as 'example.auth0.com' in the .env and app.jsx files it needed to be set to 'example.auth0.com'

Atin Mathur • Jul 12 '20 • Edited

Hi Justin, I am getting the "Error parsing token: invalid issuer". I think I have set the right domain which is "username.us.auth0.com". And I didn't get your solution to this problem. Can you please explain again?

zili • Dec 17 '20

Nice post! I successfully setup a simple application with your example without any problem. But now I have a question beyond the scope of this article: I want to setup some React router e.g.: having a /jokes for the page in your example. but gin is unable to comprehend the url /jokes (vs. the previous /) and return a 404. is there a way to setup the route in gin to also respect the routes defined in React router?
Thanks!

zili • Dec 17 '20 • Edited

Did some research on serving React with static file (create-react-app.dev/docs/deployme...), so basically I have to define the client side routing paths in the go server, and point them to the same static files, e.g.:
router.Use(static.Serve("/jokes", static.LocalFile("./views", true)))

Also because gin doesn't support path regex, I have to either customize a handler for that case or define all my client side routing on the go backend. a bit tedious, but that works! :)
github.com/gin-gonic/gin/issues/229

Jake Varness • Apr 22 '18

Looks quite extensive! Definitely going to need to check this out later. Bookmarked!

Francis Sunday • Apr 22 '18

Great

Jake Varness • Apr 22 '18

For real though, pretty sure this post could replace this book:

Cloud Native Go: Building Web Applications and Microservices for the Cloud with Go and React (Developer's Library) amazon.com/dp/0672337797/ref=cm_sw...

Natasha Bieber • Jan 27 '20

Thank you Francis for providing the detailed information about web application development. The blog was absolutely amazing! Lot of information which can be useful for web app users, Keep it up. bit.ly/2RHSivk

Sam Clark • Sep 9 '18

This is amazing! Thank you so much Francis!

Francis Sunday • Sep 12 '18

You're welcome Sam! I'm glad you liked it :)

Francis Sunday • Nov 4 '18

Hello Nico!

I'm glad you enjoyed reading this piece of mine. Do try it out, and also explore other libraries available in the Go ecosystem, Good luck :D

Ian Wilson • Apr 24 '18

Awesome post, you went into great detail!

Francis Sunday • Apr 24 '18

Thank you Lan, I'm glad you liked it :)

Leo.png • Jun 1 '18

Great, great post ! Thanks

Francis Sunday • Jun 2 '18

Thanks Leo

José Martínez • Apr 22 '18

Thanks for sharing. It's a great work.

Francis Sunday • Apr 22 '18

Thanks, I'm glad you liked it José.

Máté Bajusz • Jul 20 '19

Are you sure it's safe to store JWT in localstorage? From my understanding, this is vulnerable to any XSS attack. Apart from that, I liked the tutorial!