Isomorphic React Relay

Adds server side rendering support to React Relay.

If you are using react-router-relay, then you might also be interested in isomorphic-relay-router, which uses isomorphic-relay.

Acknowledgments

Thanks to @voideanvalue for the information that helped create the initial version this project. I also thanks @josephsavona for valuable advices that helped improve it.

Installation

npm install -S isomorphic-relay

How to use

Make sure isomorphic-relay module is loaded before react-relay on the server, because isomorphic-relay includes a hack to prevent "self is not defined" error (see facebook/fbjs#47):

// First load isomorphic-relay:
import IsomorphicRelay from 'isomorphic-relay';

// And only then load react-relay:
import Relay from 'react-relay';

Don't forget to inject a network layer to Relay on the server. And if you are using Relay.DefaultNetworkLayer, specify the full url to the GraphQL endpoint:

const GRAPHQL_URL = `http://localhost:8080/graphql`;

Relay.injectNetworkLayer(new Relay.DefaultNetworkLayer(GRAPHQL_URL));

Inject a no-op batching strategy into the Relay change emitter, but only on the server:

import RelayStoreData from 'react-relay/lib/RelayStoreData';

RelayStoreData.getDefaultInstance().getChangeEmitter().injectBatchingStrategy(() => {});

When processing a request on the server, prepare the data using IsomorphicRelay.prepareData, then render React using IsomorphicRelay.RootContainer in place of Relay.RootContainer, and send the React output along with the data to the client:

app.get('/', (req, res, next) => {
  const rootContainerProps = {
    Component: MyContainer,
    route: new MyRoute(),
  };

  IsomorphicRelay.prepareData(rootContainerProps).then(data => {
    const reactOutput = ReactDOMServer.renderToString(
      <IsomorphicRelay.RootContainer {...rootContainerProps} />
    );

    res.render('index.ejs', {
      preloadedData: JSON.stringify(data),
      reactOutput
    });
  }, next);
});

On page load in the browser, inject the prepared data to the Relay store using IsomorphicRelay.injectPreparedData, then render React using IsomorphicRelay.RootContainer in place of Relay.RootContainer:

const data = JSON.parse(document.getElementById('preloadedData').textContent);

IsomorphicRelay.injectPreparedData(data);

const rootElement = document.getElementById('root');

// use the same rootContainerProps as on the server
ReactDOM.render(<IsomorphicRelay.RootContainer {...rootContainerProps} />, rootElement);

Example

See here.