React with Django: The Ultimate Guide to Building Full-Stack Applications

Tired of managing both the front-end and back-end technologies? You’re not alone. Modern web development makes developers crumbling to integrate such a dynamic way front-end with the secure and reliable back-end frameworks. It is difficult to have this separation between technologies — dealing with integration troubles, trying to identify where performance bottlenecks occur, and maintaining the app on both sides; even when things go right it’s still a bit of a headache! So what if we could combine React, one of the most popular front-end technologies with Django backend to achieve smooth full-stack development?

In this guide, I will illustrate how combining React with Django you can build a scalable web application that runs smoothly. React can handle your dynamic UI and Django can manage the back-end, allowing you to slingshot a smoother development experience with less complexity and fast applications.

Introduction to React & Django

What is ReactJS?

React is a JavaScript open-source library created and managed by Facebook. It allows software engineers to write single-page applications for the web more rapidly, as it only re-renders parts of the user interface that change over time—as opposed to reacting the whole page each time an update occurs to its Hat tip. Developers can easily build custom components that can be reused, which are useful for managing complex UI. Currently, ReactJS possesses the market share of around 5.4% of all the websites using JavaScript library.

What is Django?

Django is a high-level Python web framework that performs the best in terms of speed. It manages the server-side logic, and data storage as well as provides various security features.

React with Django, Why?

With React on the front and Django in the back end, your application is separable. This itself separates the concerns for front-end and back-end so that maintainability can be improved and debugging becomes a cakewalk.

React works well with jQuery as it is a huge DOM difference engine, and with Django since no one knows how to scale. Together, they enable your app to scale and take on more users and operations as your business grows.

Faster Development: React enables faster frontend development for its component-based architecture. You can hire ReactJS Developers possessing expertise to build and deploy features rapidly integrated with Django’s robust back-end offerings, including an ORM (Object-Relational mapping) and built-in admin interface.

django-render

Build fast, user-friendly applications with Django and React.https://t.co/jyj8qM5Aw4

— Python Hub (@PythonHub) June 27, 2024

Table for Understanding ReactJS with Django

What are the possible benefits of using ReactJS with Django?

Front-end and (Back End) Separation of Concerns

You can separate the front-end from the back-end (decouple), which makes your UI clean and not tied to any logic/data management, using React + Django. It is then easier for the application to develop and maintain, because of it:

With ReactJS, front-end developers can concentrate on just the dynamic user interfaces without any data management or server-side logic headache while back-end developers handle the backend server logic leveraging the robust Django features.

It allows the front-end and back-end to scale separately, unlike monolithic in which when we need to add a new feature we have to do a major lift across the entire system.

Flexibility and Scalability

It is unbeatable when it comes to Scalability with React & Django together. With Django building up on the 3 components, it makes sure that your app scales with growing data sets and user traffic. Meanwhile, React:

• Very smooth when updating heavy UIs because of the React DOM which means only the changed part of the UI will be updated.
• Maintains the ability to easily connect to and scale functionality from third-party services or APIs

Use Case: We at eSparkBiz have developed an eCommerce platform that is React-based for a Greenfield project to make their frontend best-in-class and scalable for user experience, with Django wrapped at the back to manage the customer database doGetConnection() getNode.openConnection(); Due to this modularity, the system was able to scale easily as traffic grew without suffering performance degradation.

Django and Component-Based UI with React

By far one of the best features in React is its component-based architecture. If the hype falls away you see that each UI component is self-contained, reusable, and easy to maintain. Along with Django ORM for database interactions, you have:

Re-usable components for minor things such as Django forms, modals, and tables which helped in efficient front-end development.

Database management, a clean and powerful, Django’s ORM abstracts your SQL queries out and you can run the business logic directly.

React and Django Full Stack Web Development

Leveraging the Core Benefits of ReactJS used in the front-end and Django used at the back, it takes care of the user interface and makes sure that our React app is rendered super fast, all interacts immediately (interact to user action as soon as possible), efficient way so that everything looks smooth.

The database tables, user login, and application security are handled by Django. Now, this architecture is very well suited for full-stack developers striving to build robust applications that are not only client-friendly but also secure.

Use case: eSparkBiz built Real-time Dashboard for a Logistics client in a recent Django project. The front-end user interface was a dynamic react application used for real-time updates on the statuses of shipments, and the back-end was a Python Django app storing data securely from multiple warehouse locations.

Table for Understanding the key benefits of using ReactJS with Django

Also Read: Top React JS UI Frameworks Every Developer Should Know

Setting Up React with Django

Setup Prerequisites for React and Django

In preparation for creating a full-stack Django and React app, ensure you have:

• Use Python and Django for the backend.
• On the front end we use React with js file and npm/yarn (You can see your make file or package.)
• As React and Django talk through APIs, so knowing Django REST API helps.

How to install Django and create a new Django Project?

To get started with Django:

• Django can be installed with: pip install Django
• Start a new project using: django-admin startproject yourprojectname.
• Models and Views to manage backend logic on the Django side

Creating a new React app with React-Gatsby and Gatsbysoles

To set up React:

• React Installation following command line type: npx create-react-app yourappname.
• Build parent component that will be the building blocks of your UI and make them reusable.

Making Django to React with Webpack and Babel

Django is in charge of the back-end logic and Webpack + Babel takes care of handling React assets (like images) as well as essentially unknown features like JSX:

• Webpack bundles all your React assets and optimizes it for the front-end app to load fast.
• Babel turns modern Javascript (ES6+) into a code snippet that can run on any browser.

Core Configuration Webpack with Django involves combining the two build processes and making sure that all React assets are bundled by Webpack to be served out via Django.

Table for understanding the React with Django Setup

Integrating React with Django

Developing API using Django Rest Framework

Building web APIs for Django + ReactJS with Django Rest Framework (DRF) Key steps include:

• Install the DRF: $ pip install djangorestframework
• Build a new Django API that your React app can query for data

React Frontend to Django Backend Communication

REST APIs or GraphQL from Django to React and vice-versa

• You make HTTP requests to Django endpoints In React using fetch or Axios.
• Django sends all of the necessary pressed data back to React (DRF via JSON).

Use case: We once used Django Rest Framework to handle the backend API request of a healthcare app at eSparkBiz. React was managing the patient, Front end, and Django for secure data processing along with authentication.

Django APIs into the React fetch data

Fetching data is simple:

• Fetch Django-APIs in React using either fetch or Axios
• Rendering data to User interfaces in the React components folder for a responsive interaction.

State Management in ReactJS with Django

State management is important when it comes to data-heavy applications. In React to manage the app’s global state — Redux or Context API (mostly for handling simple kinds of stuff like toggling dark mode etc);

So have Redux control the flow of your API data as it moves throughout your Django React app — i.e. when fetching data with 3rd part APIs from within a simulation, or to pull in multiple Django APIs for example.

Table for understanding the Integration of React with Django

Authentication in React and Django User Management

Django Authentication System

Django offers a built-in solution for managing sign-up, login, and password recovery.

• For the system to scale, users could email verify here or use OAuth/social login.

Secure Authentication with JWT

JWT tokens are preferred for modern authentication. This approach involves:

• Django issues a token at login, client stores in local storage and uses to authenticate the same API requests

Managing Authentication with Django and React

Session-based Authentication

One of the essential Django Performance techniques, sessions are handled on the server while in React session states are managed on the client side. The session token is sent back and forth with each request parameter for secure validation.

Table for Understanding the Authentication with React & Django

How to structure your first Django-react REST app?

How to Build a Basic Blog with Django as the Backend and React as the Frontend?

Start learning how to integrate ReactJS with Django by creating a blog. The back-end, database, and API endpoints should be handled by Django, while React should handle the front end of users.

• Django to maintain models, views, and APIs for blog posts.
• When implementing the React application, blog posts are going to be rendered dynamically by React which also forwards all user requests sending them directly to the server side.

Steps:

• Create a project with Django, including Blog Post models related to title, content, and date.
• Writing Views for the APIs with DRF.
• Configured React to get the blog post data using Django API and display it in the front-end side parameterizing.

Hooking Up Django Blog Posts API to React

After you have your Django API up and running, you can hook into it with fetch or Axios from a React frontend. It lets React reach the blog posts from the Django server.

Steps:

Setup a Blog API endpoint in Django using DRF using the urls import path

This means that, in your React app, you will fetch the data from your Django API using fetch() or import Axios and now you have to use 3rd party packages to handle all of these.

• To create a URLs py file in Django, you can use urls import path
• Create a file naming it as urls.py in the same folder as the views.py file
• Type the following code in the file:

from django.urls import path
from . import views
urlpatterns = [ path('members/', views.members, name='members'), ]

Creating a Wrapper Component for Blog posts

Create a component in your React app to render the blog posts. There are two ways to display each post — either as a card or a list item, where the React component dynamically receives information about a specific blog post title and content.

Example:

const BlogList = () => {

const [posts, setPosts] = useState([]);

 useEffect(() => {

    fetch('http://localhost:8000/api/posts')

      .then(response => response.json())

      .then(data => setPosts(data));

  }, []);

  return (

    <div>

      {posts.map(post => (

        <div key={post.id}>

          <h2>{post.title}</h2>

          <p>{post.content}</p>

        </div>

      ))}

    </div>

  );

};

How To Optimize React and Django for Production?

Creating a Production-Ready Environment for Django

There are an infinite number of best practices to follow when preparing your Django app for production so as best as I can, let me try to put them together efficiently without going down the deep hole.

Gunicorn: Gunicorn which is a Python WSGI HTTP server for UNIX. It works very well with Django and if you are using Django in a production environment then Powered by Gunicorn should be written on your launch page. An interface that gets incoming HTTP requests, and talks to your Django app

Database: Use a real database of your preference in production (like PostgreSQL) and put the right settings for Django.

Improving React load times for Production

There are a few different React Performance optimization tips to optimize your React application for production uses.

Code Splitting:  React.JS provides code-splitting so that we only load components when they are needed during the initial load using lazy() and Suspense.

Lazy Loading: Elements of the application are loaded only when needed. This allows for less initial render load.

How to Secure the Production App: Security Best Practices?

In production environments, security is a prime concern. So, these are the key measures to keep your React and Django app secure.

In Django:

• Secure Communications over HTTP
• Apply for CSRF protection.
• Implement strong authentication using OAuth/JWT.

In React:

• Do not expose your backend data in the front-end (API keys, etc.)
• Prevent Cross-Site Scripting: Validates and Sanitizes user input.

Table for Understanding the Optimization Steps using React with Django

Deploying React with Django

How to deploy Django in the cloud (AWS, Heroku, etc.)

Django deployment tends to include configuring a streamlined application server, setting up databases, and making sure security is ensured by deploying it on platforms such as AWS or Heroku.

Heroku Heroku: Push your project to the cloud. Set up the virtual environment variables for the database schema and use Heroku’s Postgres add-on to production databases.

AWS Elastic Beanstalk: Deploy scalable apps using AWS. Deployment on Elastic Beanstalk, It streamlines deploying your Django app while also enabling you to monitor configurations like scaling and load balancing.

Using React as a Static Asset in Django

To serve the React front from within Django, conduct a series of steps.

Build React App: you will create React App using — the npm run build following Command which creates Static files for production in your React project

Serve Static Files in Django: Copy static files into Django’s static project directory and configure Django to serve them.

Integrate React with Django: Set up the Django views to render the React app from static build files.

How to Create a CI/CD Pipeline for React and Django

Let us begin with implementing a CI/CD pipeline to automate deployment so that every code change is tested and deployed to the target virtual environment quickly. GitHub Actions or GitLab CI are good candidates for handling pipeline setup.

• Automate testing for all code changes
• Automate pipeline and deploy artifacts through Heroku or AWS.

Tabular Understanding on Deployment with React and Django

Problems you can face while using React with Django

Handling CORS Issues

If you are working with React and Django on two different servers, surely CORS will create problems when we make API calls. To resolve this:

Django-cors-headers: The Django Cors Headers is a package that allows Django to handle the development server headers for Cross-Origin Resource Sharing requirements.

State across React and Django

Managing state can be tricky when it comes to React components and Django’s back-end. Using React with Redux or Context API makes it feasible to manage the global state in React and keep the data consistent between multiple components.

Real-time Data Sync Between Django and React

How to guarantee that my React data will always be in sync with the backend? This can be accomplished by using a real-time data synchronization method such as WebSockets (recommended) or some sort of polling.

Table for Understanding the challenges using React with Django

React and Django with Advanced Concepts

Real-Time Applications with React and Django Channels using WebSockets

For live chat, notifications, and other real-time applications you can use bidirectional communication WebSockets. So to use WebSockets in Django, we will need

1) Ruail (Python native async handler) or channels, a newer replacement;

2) React on the frontend side to react to the WebSocket connections.

Introduction to GraphQL with React and Django Full-stack Application

Using GraphQL with Django and React provides more efficient querying of data compared to traditional REST APIs. You can integrate Graphene-Django with Django and use Apollo Client in React for a modern, flexible data management solution.

Test React + Django applications

How to test A React Component [Next.js]? Test Writing at Unit Level.

Testing is done so the React component behaves as desired. Since the React component is a small piece of the larger systems, testing them in isolation is easy using tools like Jest and React Testing Library.

Testing Django Views and APIs

Django includes support to write tests, for which we can do unit test writing, for that Django has testing inbuilt features like views, APIs, etc. Write tests in models, views, and API and run them with Django TestCase.

Integrating Django Backend with React Frontend

Once again, Integration testing is concerned that React and Django communicate correctly. Leverage a powerful and flexible toolkit including Selenium, or Cypress for end-to-end tests which will interact with your frontend and backend systems like a real user.

Table for Understanding the Test Processes with React and Django

React JS with Django — Security Best Practices

Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) Protection for React Developers

Dynamic content gets automatically escaped by React before rendering it to the browser which provides an automated buffer against XSS attacks. But developers need to be careful not to use dangerously set inner HTML unless they need to.

Django CSRF(Cross-Site Request Forgery) protection

It is built-in but we can use throttling (which is used to make auth, etc secure) for our Django APIs to all requests from React are just as safe against CSRF. Remember to always send CSRF tokens while using form submit from React.

Securing React — Django API endpoints

For API endpoints, you should:

• Sensitive routes are limited to authenticated users only.
• Validate the Capture Requests: Use the token authentication (JWT) form of users.
• Use rate limit to mitigate brute force.

Also Read: React Best Practices – Step towards Boosting Development Performance

React & Django In The Wild: How We Use It With Clients

We, at eSparkBiz, have worked on numerous projects where React & Django together proved to be the perfect blend according to our client’s scope. This post includes a few real-world model instances of using this tech stack and the metrics that were important for us to monitor their performance.

eSparkBiz Retail Client – E-commerce Solution

Client Needs:

The retail client had a high-traffic e-commerce platform and was seeing instability during peak traffic times (promotions & sales) in their Magento site because the direct consumer experiences account for thousands of users at once.

• Make Multiple Payment Gateways for a Better Transaction
• Sync The Inventory: Get real-time updates, and stop stockouts or oversells.
• It has to be done by separating this scaling part to not damage the performance points & ensuring the platform can easily scale if needed.

Challenge:

• Processing high-volume traffic and inventory were two of the biggest challenges to avoid slowing down the user experience,
• Add to that multiple payment gateways, all being integrated quite seamlessly in one basket and still experience the fastest of them with user-friendliness doing wonders for you at check-out.

Solution:

ReactJS: eSparkBiz used ReactJS to build a rapid, responsive creative user interfaces that enables your customers to browse products & buy more easily.

Django: The back-end was controlled by Django, which handled the user authentication, order processing, and real-time inventory updates.

GraphQL: An integration of GraphQL to help you with proper data fetching while keeping only the required information resulting in improved performance even during peak traffic events.

Result:

Conversion rates on the platform grew by 30%, reflecting that users liked the smoother and faster shopping experience.

The system scaled really well at the time of peak traffic viz. sales promotions and did not give much of a performance penalty on the platform side with no major issues encountered.

Tabular Representation of Tech Stacks used in E-commerce Solution

Startup Client For Social Media Platform

Client Needs:

The startup aimed to build a live, real-time social media platform where users would engage with each other dynamically through live feeds, messaging, and notifications.

– They wanted the platform to be scalable and secure, enabling seamless interactions to increase user numbers.

– Secure user authentication and privacy features to protect the user’s information.

Challenge:

– Allow Phone call notifications/prompts, dynamic feed for native Phone Application

– Update constituent logging to be di-solved, scalable auth system, Increasing users Secure data practices.

Solution:

ReactJS: To make interactions smooth and in-time like having chats, likes, comments, etc amongst users, eSparkBiz created a dynamic real-time user interface via ReactJS.

Django Channels & WebSockets: Due to WebSockets, instant feedback for real messages about our platform and live module upgrading-filtering modes were provided.

Leveraging JWT for Authentication: Secure user authentication using JWT was implemented to empower the platform with secure Login and Session management.

Result:

Within months of launch, however, the platform scored over 10k active users — among which real-time messaging and notifications were used most widely.

The back-end architecture allowed the start-up to scale and expand without worrying about performance bottlenecks, porting a seamless UX even as user densities picked up.

Tabular Representation of Tech Stacks used in Social Media Platform

Enterprise Resource Planning System (ERP) for eSparkBiz Client

Client Needs:

The client needed a bespoke ERP solution to synchronize several divisions (e.g., sales, inventory management, customer service) missions in different areas.

– The ability for real-time data to update / access from Employees across the various branches was necessary.

– Make sure the ERP system is scalable as they plan to open more locations in the future.

Challenge:

– Developing a system that is needed to process and access data in real-time from various departments such as inventory, sales, customer, etc.

– Designed with scalability to handle the increase of data size and new branches being added without penalty.

Solution:

React JS: eSparkBiz, a reputed ReactJS Development Company, created custom dashboard using React JS, an open-source front-end JavaScript library allowing cross-functional employees to directly manage data such as tracking sales performance, managing inventory, and seeing customer support tickets in real-time.

Django ORM & PostgreSQL: Django ORM with Python manage the complex backend relationships between sales, inventory, and customer data. We need to properly handle large data sets and scale up as enterprise needs so we went for PostgreSQL.

Live Data Processing: A real-time processing system was created to serve live data on inventory, sales performance, or interactions with customers for employees.

Result:

Their ERP, on the other hand, improved the operational efficiency by 50% thereby allowing data to be effortlessly accessed and managed across different branch locations.

The system scaled for 1,000 employees or more in multiple branches easily and could go well beyond that as the enterprise continued to grow.

Tabular Representation of Tech Stacks used in ERP Solution

Chintan Gor

CTO, eSparkBiz

Enthusiastic for web app development, Chintan Gor has zeal in experimenting with his knowledge of Node, Angular & React in various aspects of development. He keeps on updating his technical know-how thus pinning his name among the topmost CTO's in India. His contribution is penned down by him through various technical blogs on trending tech. He is associated with eSparkBiz from the past 14+ years where one can get premium services.