Part 3. Isomorphic architecture

Now that you’ve seen how isomorphic architecture works and what foundational skills are needed to build a React application, it’s time to dive into the nitty-gritty of isomorphic apps. This part covers a wide range of topics while focusing on getting you ready to build a production-ready isomorphic application. It takes the concepts introduced in chapter 2 and examines each piece of the flow in detail. It also covers several advanced topics, including testing, real-world app challenges, user sessions, and caching.

The first two chapters in this section cover isomorphic architecture basics. In chapter 7, you’ll learn to use Express and how to use React and React Router on the server to enable server-rendered app routes. In chapter 8, you’ll see how to hand off the server-rendered page to the browser in a seamless way.

The next three chapters cover the advanced topics. In chapter 9, you’ll learn how to think about testing in the context of an application that behaves as both a server-rendered page and a single-page application. In chapter 10, you’ll learn how to handle cases such as code that can run only in the browser because it uses the window object and how to avoid duplicating your error-handling code. Finally, in chapter 11, you’ll get your app ready for production. You’ll learn performance best practices, caching strategies, and how to handle user sessions in an isomorphic app.