react-rails

react-rails is a ruby gem which makes it easier to use React and JSX in your Ruby on Rails application.

This is done in 2 ways:

1. making it easy to include react.js as part of your dependencies in application.js.
2. transforming JSX into regular JS on request, or as part of asset precompilation.

Installation

We're specifically targeting versions of Ruby on Rails which make use of the asset pipeline, which means Rails 3.1+.

As with all gem dependencies, we strongly recommend adding react-rails to your Gemfile and using bundler to manage your application's dependencies.

# Gemfile

gem 'react-rails', '~> 0.4.1.0'

Usage

react.js

In order to use React client-side in your application, you must make sure the browser requests it. One way to do that is to drop react.js into app/assets/javascript/ and by default your applcation manifest will pick it up. There are downsides to this approach, so we made it even easier. Once you have react-rails installed, you can just require react directly in your manifest:

You can require it in your manifest:

// app/assets/application.js

//= require react

Alternatively, you can include it directly as a separate script tag:

# app/views/layouts/application.erb.html

<%= javascript_include_tag "react" %>

JSX

To transform your JSX into JS, simply create .js.jsx files, and ensure that the file has the /** @jsx React.DOM */ docblock. These files will be transformed on request, or precompiled as part of the assets:precompile task.

Configuring

There are 2 variants available. :development gives you the unminified version of React. This provides extra debugging and error prevention. :production gives you the minified version of React which strips out comments and helpful warnings, and minifies.

# config/environments/development.rb
MyApp::Application.configure do
  config.react.variant = :development
end

# config/environments/production.rb
MyApp::Application.configure do
  config.react.variant = :production
end