How to connect Django to ReactJs

As a Django backend developer you might need to collaborate with a frontend dev who uses react or you might be a full stack developer interested in building the front end of your applications with react( which I believe we all love by the way 😌). Then you need to learn how to interface a react frontend application to your Django backend. This tutorial will guide you through the easy steps. We are going to set up the Django backend first then we'll set up our react frontend and finally connect them.

You can also access the Github repo for the completed tutorial here

Setting up the Django backend.

I’ll assume that you already have python installed on your machine. If you don't, you can download and set it up via this link. Please ensure you download the latest version of python. (Python 3.97)

Open the Command Line on Windows, Terminal on Mac, and Linux and navigate to the directory where you want to store the project and create a new directory

mkdir React-Django

Move into the new directory

cd React-Django

Create a Virtual environment.

It is recommended to always create a virtual environment before you start your project. This helps you to separate the packages you use in this application from other applications; any change you make here won't affect the same package in another application on your system. To create a virtual environment on your system; run this command:

For mac/unix users: python3 -m venv env
For windows users: py -m venv env

After creating the environment, activate it by running :

For mac/unix users: source env/bin/activate
For windows users: .\env\Scripts\activate

You can deactivate it by simply running the command below, but you don't have to deactivate it yet.

deactivate

Installing Django

Now let us proceed to install Django,

pip install django

Create a new Django project and name it “project1”

django-admin startproject project1

Move into the project directory

cd project1

Migrate your “changes” with this command

python manage.py migrate

Then you can start your server to ensure that everything is working properly

python manage.py runserver 

Copy this URL: http://127.0.0.1:8000 and open it in any browser of your choice. You should be able to see something similar to this 👇

Setting up the react frontend.

Next, we need to create the frontend react application in the current directory project1 that contains the manage.py file:

npx create-react-app frontend

Move into the frontend directory

cd frontend

and then start the frontend application by running

npm start

You should see the default react application page in your browser now; if you cannot see it open this link in your browser.

http://localhost:3000

We won't be making any other change to the installed react application so we are done here but we need to build the package which the backend will make use of by running:

npm run build

and then we also need to remove /build from the gitignore file since the backend would need to make use of the templates and staticfiles in the build folder.

Now let's head to the backend setup and connect it to the react application we just created.

Interfacing the front end application to the Django backend.

Move back into the root folder

cd ..

Next, we'll be making some changes to the settings.py file in the backend project file so that the Django backend can recognize the react application we created as the default frontend directory. Open up the settings.py file and make the following changes.

Import 'os' at the top of the file

import os

then configure the template directory by pointing it towards the build folder in our frontend react directory.

TEMPLATES = [
    {
        'BACKEND': 'django.template.backends.django.DjangoTemplates',
        'DIRS': [os.path.join(BASE_DIR, 'frontend', 'build')],
        'APP_DIRS': True,
        'OPTIONS': {
            'context_processors': [
                'django.template.context_processors.debug',
                'django.template.context_processors.request',
                'django.contrib.auth.context_processors.auth',
                'django.contrib.messages.context_processors.messages',
            ],
        },
    },
]

We need to configure the static files directory as well; add this line to the bottom of the page below the STATIC_URL line.

STATICFILES_DIRS = [os.path.join(BASE_DIR, 'frontend', 'build', 'static')]

We are done with the setup. So let us go ahead and create a simple view that will display our default react page.

python manage.py startapp core

Don't forget to add the new app "core" to the "INSTALLED APPS" section in your settings.py file.

Open the views.py file and create a simple function-based view that just renders our page.

def front(request):
    context = { }
    return render(request, "index.html", context)

Then we map the created view to a URL in our urls.py file in the project1 folder. We import the "front" view function from the core app and we map it to the default URL " ".

from django.contrib import admin
from django.urls import path
from core.views import front

urlpatterns = [
    path('admin/', admin.site.urls),
    path("", front, name="front"),
]

The work is done. Now run

python manage.py runserver 

Reload the page in your browser and you should now see the react page we saw earlier.

Notice that the URL is now http://127.0.0.1:8000.

We have successfully connected our Django backend to a react frontend. You will need the Django REST framework to create the APIs the react frontend application will make use of to get backend data.

Note

If you want to create your frontend directory outside the Django directory. You'll need to get the path that points to the overall base directory that will hold both your backend and frontend directories.

Add this line below the BASEDIR variable at the top of the settings.py file.

REAL_BASE_DIR = Path(__file__).resolve().parent.parent.parent

Next, the new variable REAL_BASE_DIR will be used in the Templates and Staticfiles sections.

Templates:

'DIRS': [os.path.join(REAL_BASE_DIR, 'frontend', 'build')],

Staticfiles:

STATICFILES_DIRS = [os.path.join(REAL_BASE_DIR, 'frontend', 'build', 'static')]

This will ensure that Django searches for templates and static files in your frontend folder which is outside the Django directory.

Congratulations! Now you can get started on that great project idea of yours by using any of the two methods above!! Cheers!!

Django + React

If you have any questions, feel free to drop them as a comment or send me a message on Linkedin or Twitter and I'll ensure I respond as quickly as I can. Ciao 👋

Comments

[Paulo Antonio]

Great article but I'd like to add two things:

If you're using Git, React includes /build in its gitignore so that builds won't go into the repository but since you're serving your React app from Django, the build also needs to be in the project as if it were the standard templates and static files.

That's why I usually rename my build folder to something like react_build and use this name in my Django settings file.

Another thing, in a React SPA, React itself should take care of the routes and display the proper components, probably with react-router. In your example, what happens if I create a page in my React app in /dashboard for instance and go to 127.0.0.1:8000/dashboard ?

Django will throw a 404 because there's no /dashboard in the urls.py but that should not have been handled by Django but by React.

For that problem, what I'm doing is using a regex in urls.py that captures any path that should not be handled by Django and redirect them to the React app.

So for instance, my base urls.py will contain /admin, /api, /static and some other specific files and after all those, the regex that sends the React app back to any URL path so that React itself does the routing and display the appropriate components or a 404 page. My current regex is:

re_path('(?!.*(static))', TemplateView.as_view(template_name="index.html", content_type="text/html"))

Need to import re_path from django.urls and import TemplateView from django.views.generic or replace it with a view like in your example.

I hope that makes sense.

[Faruq Abdulsalam]

Yes it does. Thanks for reading. I'll look into the points you raised.

[Subhendu Dash]

Informative! Keep it up!

[Faruq Abdulsalam]

Thank you

[Ulisesorozcovi]

thanks for the most significant contribution

[Faruq Abdulsalam]

Thanks for reading

[Shingirai98]

Great article!
Can you also do a simplistic API tutorial to add to this?

[Faruq Abdulsalam]

Hello Shingirai. Thanks for reading. I'll look for time to do that!! Fingers crossed

[Deepak Rawat]

hey, this is exactly what i was looking for thanks!!

one doubt however, how would you deploy it?

Say we have a single repo for both
Application
|Django_BackendCode
|ReactFrontendCode

How would you deploy this?
deploy the backend separately (say at api.backend.com), and use api.backend.com to fetch data using axios?

[valleyofblackpanther]

Can I use pycharm to do all of this because it's easy to do the setup in pycharm instead of visual studio. What framework did you use? And another question do we need a lot of knowledge about python to dig deep into django.

[Faruq Abdulsalam]

Yes you can use any editor of your choice. You dont need to be a python guru to use django, but you need to understand the fundamentals of python strongly.

[xuwenjing]

Can I connect Django with ReactJS with the folder structure like following picture?
dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/up...

[Faruq Abdulsalam]

Hello xuwenjing. Yes you can use the folder structure in your attached picture. However, note that you will need to make few changes to your settings.py file.

1) You have to use a 'path' that would point to the build directory in your frontend directory. You can find the code for that here: dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/up...

2) Next, under the templates and static files sections., you have to change the variable BASE_DIR to the new variable REAL_BASE_DIR created in 1 above.

Templates: 'DIRS': [os.path.join(REAL_BASE_DIR, 'frontend', 'build')]
Staticfiles: STATICFILES_DIRS = [os.path.join(REAL_BASE_DIR, 'frontend', 'build', 'static')]

This ensures that Django searches for templates and static files in your frontend folder which is outside the Django directory

[xuwenjing]

Thanks!
I followed the steps, but I only got a blank page: dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/up...

The message when running : dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/up...

Could you please have a look? Thanks for your help~

[Faruq Abdulsalam]

Hello xuwenjing,

The message displayed when running is okay. It shows that there is no issue with your code.

Regarding the blank page. Did you remember to run npm run build in your frontend directory?

Can i see your frontend directory?

[Bernard M]

Can you update this with examples that show full paths of the Django project and React project? For example.
C:\Backend\React Django\env\project1
C:\Frontend\react-project\

Otherwise as it is, it is a bit confusing -
'DIRS': [os.path.join(BASE_DIR, 'frontend', 'build')], - BASE_DIR IS IN Django and back end repo so why add the front end which is supposed to be in its own front end repo

React-Django\env\project1\ - Django project and apps
But what directory is this in relation to the react project directory “front end”
noting that you will git init this to the Django repo, my guess is that the react project front end folder will be in a different folder, correct? But based on your template directory configuration, this is confusing as it shows that the template directory is in the Django project folder?


React front end folder and path ??
What directory is this in relation to the django project directory?
is this frontend folder in the django project??

[Faruq Abdulsalam]

Hello Bernard. Here is a screenshot of the folder structure for the tutorial: dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/up...

The react frontend application folder replaces the default templates folder from which Django is meant to locate and load templates which would normally be specified in this format 'DIRS': [BASE_DIR/ 'templates'].

However, since we want the Django backend to make use of a react frontend while using a single server: http://127.0.0.1:8000, we need to point Django to the folder where it will get the frontend files which in the tutorial above is the build folder in the frontend directory. Hence the necessity for the STATICFILES_DIRS = [os.path.join(BASE_DIR, 'frontend', 'build', 'static')] line.

[Guilherme Jesuino Ramires]

Great! Thanks!

[Megan]

Great Tutorial! I really want to finish it, but unfortunetly i'm getting errors when trying to run python manage.py startapp core(Refer to the image for error). any assitance would be apprecaited 🙏🏻 I did make sure 'core' was added to my INSTALLED _APP section and removed /build from the .gitignore.
Thank you!

Here is the link to the repository where the project lives
github.com/Moodybleu/project1