JERSEY CITY, NJ — Redwood, a full-stack JavaScript/TypeScript web application framework, runs entirely on React Server Components (RSC), framework co-founder David Price told the audience at React Summit US on Monday.
RSC is a relatively new addition to React and was a big hit at this first US-based React Summit. RSC, as its name suggests, is a server component that enables data retrieval, among other server-side functions. A panel discussion about RSC positioned it as a simpler alternative to single-page apps (SPAs), which have become the mainstream for front-end development in recent years. The committee noted that the requirement for JavaScript on the server could hinder some potential adoption.
“RSC combines a simple request/response model with multi-page apps,” Price said in his presentation. “[The React team] If you recall, the seamless interactivity of a client-centric, single-page app gives you the best of both worlds, allowing you to go back and forth from a server-centric model to the client, and we talked about this in our pre-lunch panel. It is the central model and, in some cases, allows these two mental models to be integrated into one. ”
This may seem like a step backwards, sending functionality back to the server and away from the client, but Tom Preston-Werner, co-founder of Redwood, sees this as a step back. It actually encouraged viewers to think of development as a spiral moving forward. Preston-Werner is the founder and former CEO of GitHub.
So far, Next.js is the only framework that offers RSC support, and even that is in the experimental stage.
While data fetching could be a game-changer for Redwood, Price admitted that the stack has struggled to find its niche, in part because it uses GraphQL. He added that GraphQL has proven to hinder developer adoption despite his Redwood efforts to simplify deployment. RSC is very complementary to GraphQL, he argued, but RSC means a developer can use Redwood but not know GraphQL and still fetch data from anywhere. However, building on GraphQL means Redwood won't need to add another application to support his RSC, as Vercel did with his Next.js. To do.
“We believe that React Server Component fits better with the Redwood framework than any other framework at this time,” Price said.
Currently, the Redwood team is still building support for RSC, but developers can already experiment with the canary version. They plan to support RSC and SSR in the Bighorn Epoch (Redwood calls it the Major Release Epoch).
This is one of the next six pillars planned for Bighorn.
- Deployments: Unlock deployments and add more provider first class
- Large startups: Grow with your startup using Redwood
- Fullstack Table Stakes: Added “missing” self-hosting functionality
- Getting Started UX to help onboard new developers
- Basics: Low-level tasks important to other features
In September, Redwood held its first user conference. At that event they announced a number of changes, which Price highlighted during his presentation.
Among them is Redwood Mailer, which allows developers to preview templates while coding within the framework. It also supports local email sending, he quipped, so organizations testing templates no longer need their interns to send spam emails.
During the experimental phase, we also added Redwood Studio. Redwood Studio is a command-line observability tool that provides:
- Tracing with Open Telemetry (services and GraphQL).
- Logging SQL statements.
- General indicators.and
- GraphQL playground with impersonated authentication.
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