how to put backend and frontend together - returning react frontend from fastapi backend endpoint

问题

Firstly, I just wanted to say that this is my first web application project. I've spent the past few days trying to find answers on how to essentially put the frontend and backend together. I have a lot of questions, but the main one I want answered is on how to return my frontend 'final product' from a backend endpoint.

This is what I understand (please correct me if I'm wrong):

The frontend code is run by the client (browser).
When the client interacts with the webpage, the frontend makes API calls to the backend to retrieve/modify data, as necessary.
The backend and frontend is often developed separately, and could be hosted on separate servers.
It is, however, possible (and maybe simpler) to host it on a single domain/server. I am hoping to do this, in order to avoid a whole set of issues with CORS.

Then comes the following problem:

When I want to test out my front end and see how it's coming along, I just run npm run start. I then go to the given url (usually http://localhost:8080/) and I have access to the frontend that I've developed. And when I want to deploy it, I run npm run build, which gives me a dist folder (bundled together and minified).

If I want to run and test my backend locally, as I am using FastAPI, I simply run uvicorn main:app --reload.

How to put the two together? More specifically, in my backend code, how do I return the product of my frontend work (i.e., the dist folder?). I've tried the following (simplified):

@app.get("/", response_class=HTMLResponse)
def root():
    return open("../frontend/dist/index.html", "r").read()

but, of course, this only gives me the static html without the React components.

I realize this post may be loaded with incorrect assumptions and poor practices (in which case, my apologies! and I would appreciate any corrections/suggestions.) However, if the following questions could be answered, I would greatly appreciate it. These are questions I have that will hopefully help me test my whole web application locally on my computer.

How do I return the product of my frontend work for the GET request at the domain root endpoint?
If there is a page A, page B, and page C for my web app, each with url www.example.com/A, www.example.com/B, and www.example.com/C do I have to create three separate React frontend projects? I.e., equivalent of having three dist folders? What is the standard way this is handled?

回答1:

The "traditional" approach to running a web application is to have a server that serves your web application (i.e. your React app). Usually you'll hear about nginx being used as the web server being used for modern day single page applications. When you run npm run start you start up a local server on your machine and it makes your app available at http://localhost:8080 (the port and hostname are of course configurable).

When it comes to your API, it should be it's own server available at a different endpoint/url, and then your web app will make API calls to that endpoint/url in order to fetch data.

The way you're describing things, it sounds like you're trying to use FastAPI to server render your web app, but I'm not sure how feasible that is, especially considering there is an entire framework solely dedicated to server rendering react applications.

来源：https://stackoverflow.com/questions/62928450/how-to-put-backend-and-frontend-together-returning-react-frontend-from-fastapi

标签

reactjs

fastapi