Clojure React Renderer Proof of Concept

What am I looking at?

This was an experiment to see how plausible it would be to pre-render React.js components using Clojure and Java 8's Nashorn JavaScript engine.

... and the verdict is?

Using the linked resources, it was no trouble getting this trivial example up and running.

I was expecting the Java/Nashorn interop to be verbose and involve lots of boilerplate, but with the help of a few utility functions I was able to build up a nice API. (e.g. (react-render (sample-react-component data)))

I'm anxiously awaiting the opportunity to use this stack in a non-trivial application. I would recommend others give Clojure/Nashorn some thought before defaulting to (node|io).js for their next SPA that requires server-side rendering (Sorry, but I'm not bringing category theory into this conversation.)

Where are the interesting bits?

You'll want to have a look at renderer.clj.

Prerequisites

You will need Leiningen 2.0.0 or above installed.

Running the application locally

To start a web server for the application, run:

lein ring server

Running the tests

lein with-profile test midje

Resources

• http://winterbe.com/posts/2014/04/05/java8-nashorn-tutorial/

• http://augustl.com/blog/2014/jdk8_react_rendering_on_server/