Different ways to connect react frontend and node backend

There are different ways to connect react frontend and NodeJS backend. In this blog, I am going to tell you three ways how you can connect backend and frontend. These are the ways most developers prefer.

Prerequisites

• React and NodeJS

Let's get started

1. Single server

The first way is having a single server that serves both Node API and React SPA under the same domain. Here data is still exchanged through JSON. As you can see in the above picture, all the routes which do not start with /api will be handled by React SPA.
This is a simple way and you don't need to worry about those CORS errors🥶.
Here's how you can do it-

• Copy build folder files from react app and paste them in public folder of NodeJS server.
• Now server the static index.html which in the public folder ```java

app.use(express.static(path.join('public')));
app.use((req,res) => {
res.sendFile(path.resolve(__dirname, 'public', 'index.html'));
});

#### Pros
* Single server.
* No more CORS errors 😅
* Ideal for small applications.

#### Cons
* As both frontend and backend will be handled by the same server, you may face performance issues.

### 2. Two separated servers
![Two separated servers](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/j4r735kh5mzslxq4l0yf.jpg)
Here we need two separate servers. One server serve static React SPA and another server serve Node API. Data will be exchanged through JSON.

#### Pros
* As we use two different servers for backend and frontend, we get better performance.
* Ideal for bigger applications.

#### Cons
* Have to maintain two different servers.

### 3. Template engines
The third way and the least preferred way is server-side rendering with template engines like [ejs](https://ejs.co/), [handlebars](https://handlebarsjs.com/), [pugjs](https://pugjs.org/) etc... Here we don't create any REST API.
We render different HTML pages for different HTTP requests and use react to pre-render some parts of the page.
This is not the preferred way to connect React and Node because we don't get the power of reactive user experience. 

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So, what other ways do you know and what is your preferred way? Comment below 👇

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Hope this helps you!
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Comments

[Santee]

The 2nd 🙌🏽🙌🏽

[b00000001]

Nextjs has been handy for simplifying this process also, as a newbie.

[Eric Bishard]

With Gatsby 4 there are some interesting options now as well!

[Fernando Massó]

nextjs provides the ability to use both front-end and a backend api from the same project, so far my favorite option

[Mohamed M El Sayed]

The 2nd is the best

[David Benalal]

In option 2, even if it's two different servers, you can point one to server1.com and the other to server1.com/api which solves the same CORS problem you mentionned in option 1, doesn't it?

[Rakesh Potnuru]

You can have a subdomain pointing to different server but you can't have same domain for different servers.

[slidenerd]

would like to see a Vue and Node version of this article

[Rakesh Potnuru]

I don't have experience with Vue, but I believe same concepts apply for that also.