How to use Laravel with React.js? Complete Guide

Trying to create a captivating user experience with dynamic and responsive interfaces? Then integrating Laravel’s robust backend capabilities with React’s lightning-fast frontend library might be the perfect solution.

Web development services opt for this powerful combination to leverage the best of both worlds. That is, Laravel’s ability to handle complex data logic and authentication and React.js delivering smooth, interactive UIs to engage the users.

So how do you use Laravel with React.js? Well, that’s what we will discuss in this blog. But first let’s begin with brief overviews of Laravel and React.js.

What is Laravel?

Laravel is a PHP framework used for web development. It is known for its Model-View-Controller (MVC) architectural pattern. This robust MVC structure of Laravel allows developers to make the code easier to organize and maintain.

It provides built-in functionalities like authentication, routing, and session management to increase development efficiency. Plus, its Eloquent ORM and Laravel packages make this framework a preferred choice for modern web projects.

Laravel can also be integrated with React.js to enhance your site’s UI and functionality. While Laravel handles the backend, React.js builds a friendly interface. That results in a more robust and beautiful web application.

Core Features of Laravel

• MVC Architecture: Laravel uses MVC architecture to promote clean and maintainable code. This structure keeps your application organized, ensuring logic, presentation, and data are handled independently.
• Eloquent ORM: Object-relational mapping (ORM) bridges the gap between relational databases and object-oriented programming languages. Laravel’s built-in ORM, Eloquent, simplifies database operations and reduces the need to write raw SQL queries.
• Blade Templating: Laravel’s Blade templating provides a way to create dynamic web pages with a clean and concise syntax. Laravel Blade integrates with PHP code, allowing you to embed logic within your views. It ensures the separation of concerns between presentation and application logic.
• Artisan CLI: Laravel includes Artisan, a powerful command-line interface (CLI) tool. Using Artisan, you can seed your database in Laravel, perform Laravel migration, and more. This saves developers time and effort by automating repetitive tasks.
• Security: Laravel offers a robust security foundation to protect your web applications from common threats. It offers features like hashing passwords and protection from SQL injection. That ensures your applications are secure and resistant to attacks.
• Built-in Libraries and Modular Design: It has built-in libraries that handle common tasks such as authentication, caching, and file handling. This modular design allows developers to leverage pre-built functionalities without starting from scratch.

Laravel’s core features provide a solid foundation for building modern web applications. Using MVC architecture, Eloquent ORM and more, Laravel developers can create well-structured and secure web applications.

What is React.js?

React.js is a free and open-source JavaScript library created by Facebook for building user interfaces (UIs). It is particularly used for single-page applications where you need a fast, interactive, and dynamic experience.

It breaks down complex UIs into reusable components, each with its logic and appearance. These components can receive data from parent components, making them flexible and adaptable.

Additionally, virtual DOM offers a lightweight copy of the real web page. That efficiently calculates the minimal updates needed, ensuring optimal performance. Additionally, components can manage their state (data) and respond to user interactions, creating dynamic experiences.

Core Features of React.js

• Component-Based Architecture: React excels at building reusable UI components. These components can be nested, managed, and handled independently, leading to better code organization and reuse.
• Virtual DOM: React uses a virtual DOM to optimize updates. Instead of directly manipulating the DOM, React creates a virtual copy of it. When changes occur, React efficiently updates the virtual DOM and then syncs new changes with the actual DOM. This ensures an improved performance.
• JavaScript XML(JSX): JSX is a syntax extension for JavaScript that allows writing HTML-like code within JavaScript. This makes the code more readable and easier to write, as it visually resembles the structure of the UI.
• Unidirectional Data Flow: React follows unidirectional data flow, meaning data flows in one direction. This makes it easier to understand and debug applications since data changes follow one path.
• State Management: React has a built-in state management that allows components to manage and respond to changes. For more complex state management, libraries like Redux API or Context can be used.

These core features make React.js a powerful and flexible library for building modern web applications. ReactJS developers can create efficient, scalable, and maintainable user interfaces. Now, let’s understand the integration of Laravel with React.js.

Why use Laravel with React.js?

Using Laravel with React.js combines the strengths of the former’s powerful backend framework with the latter’s highly efficient front-end library. Here are some key reasons to use Laravel with React.js:

• Separation of Concerns: While Laravel handles backend logic, database interactions, and security, React.js creates dynamic and interactive user interfaces. This separation keeps your codebase well-organized and easier to maintain.
• Improved Performance: React’s Virtual DOM minimizes unnecessary re-renders, leading to smoother user experiences. Meanwhile, Laravel’s built-in caching mechanisms and efficient routing contribute to overall application performance.
• Rich Developer Experience: Both Laravel and React.js boast large and active communities. This makes development faster and more efficient with readily available third-party libraries.
• Scalability: Laravel’s modular design and React’s component-based architecture allow your application to grow scalably. You can easily add new features or functionalities without rewriting most portions of your code.
• Modern Web Development Approach: The combination uses two popular technologies perfectly suited for building web applications. Laravel provides a robust foundation, and React.js enables the creation of engaging and user-friendly interfaces.

By combining Laravel and React.js, you get a secure and scalable backend with a dynamic and interactive frontend. Web development experts use it to build modern, responsive, scalable web applications with clean code and good performance and user experience.

How to Use Laravel with React.js?

Using Laravel with React.js involves setting up a Laravel backend to handle server-side logic and a React frontend for building dynamic user interfaces. Here’s a step-by-step guide to integrating Laravel with React.js:

Prerequisites:

Before you start using Laravel with Reactjs, make sure you are up to speed with a few prerequisites.

• Basic understanding of Laravel and React.js concepts.
• Node.js and npm (or yarn) installed on your system.

Step 1: Create a Laravel Project

Use Laravel installer or Composer to create a new project. This establishes the basic structure for your Laravel application, including Laravel routing and resource controllers.

laravel new your-project-name

This command uses the Laravel installer to create a fresh Laravel project named “your-app-name”.

Using the cd command, navigate to your newly created project directory:

cd your-app-name

It will change your directory to the newly created project. Then, install dependencies by using:

npm install laravel-mix react

This command installs the Laravel Mix package. It helps compile React code and the React package itself for building React components.

Step 2: Creating React Components

Create a dedicated directory to organize your React components for better separation of concerns.

mkdir resources/react

It creates a directory named resources/react within your Laravel project’s resources directory to keep your React components.

Then, create a React Component. For example, Welcome.jsx

// resources/react/Welcome.jsx
import React from 'react';
function Welcome() {
return (
<div className="welcome">
<h1>Welcome to Your Laravel and React.js App!</h1>
</div>
);
}
export default Welcome;

This above code creates a simple React component named Welcome.jsx that displays a heading. We import React from the react package and define a functional component named Welcome. Then, return the JSX code to render the heading element.

Step 3: Configuring Laravel Mix

Open the webpack.mix.js file located in your project’s root directory using a text editor.

nano webpack.mix.js  // Or your preferred text editor

To update the configuration, locate the existing code in webpack.mix.js and replace it with the following:

const mix = require('laravel-mix');
mix.react('resources/react/app.js', 'public/js')
.sass('resources/sass/app.scss', 'public/css');

This code configures Laravel Mix to process react code. We use mix.react to specify that we’re working with React. The first argument, ‘resources/react/app.js’, indicates the entry point for your application. The second argument, ‘public/js’, defines the output directory for React JavaScript files. Then, save changes to webpack.mix.js.

Step 4: Building the React Application Entry Point

Here, we create the react application entry point. You can use the below command to create:

touch resources/react/app.js

This command creates a file named app.js within the resources/react directory. Then, import and render the component of the app.js

// resources/react/app.js
import React from 'react';
import ReactDOM from 'react-dom/client';
import Welcome from './Welcome';
const root = ReactDOM.createRoot(document.getElementById('root'));
root.render(<Welcome />);

It will import React and ReactDOM from the react package and then import the Welcome component we created earlier. We use ReactDOM.createRoot to create a root element in the DOM and render the Welcome component within it.

Step 5: Integrating React with Laravel

Create a Blade template that includes the necessary elements to integrate your React application.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Laravel and React.js App</title>
<link rel="stylesheet" href="{{ mix('css/app.css') }}">  </head>
<body>
<div id="root"></div>
<script src="{{ mix('js/app.js') }}"></script>
</body>
</html>

This code creates a basic Blade template named welcome.blade.php.

Step 6: Running the Application

To run the application, start the laravel development server. To run the application, use the command:

php artisan serve

This command starts the Laravel development server. Then, you can access your application in the browser, usually at http://localhost:8000.

Open http://localhost:8000/welcome in your browser. You should see the heading “Welcome to Your Laravel and React.js App!” displayed on the page.

By following these steps and understanding the concepts involved, you can effectively integrate Laravel with React.js. If you want to build functional and user-friendly sites by integrating ReactJS, get help from our professional Laravel development company.

FAQs About Using Laravel With React

Conclusion

By integrating Laravel’s robust backend capabilities with React’s lightning-fast frontend library, you can build powerful web applications. You can handle complex data logic and user authentication on the server-side with Laravel, while crafting smooth and interactive user interfaces with React.

By setting up a dedicated directory for React components and configuring Laravel Mix for compilation, you can seamlessly integrate these two forces. That lets you fetch data from your Laravel backend using APIs and populate your React components efficiently.

If you find the process challenging or need further assistance, consider hiring dedicated Laravel developers to streamline the integration.