Creating a basic example of SSR

We will now create a very simple server-side application to look at the steps that are needed to build a basic universal setup. It is going to be a minimal and simple setup on purpose because the goal here is to show how SSR works rather than providing a comprehensive solution or a boilerplate, even though you could use the example application as a starting point for a real-world application.

This section assumes that readers have a basic understanding of Node.js and are familiar with the concepts related to JavaScript build tools, such as webpack and its loaders.

The application will consist of two parts:

• On the server side, where we will use Express to create a basic web server and serve an HTML page with the server-side-rendered React application.
• On the client side, where we will render the application, as usual, using react-dom.

Configuring our project from scratch with webpack

Both sides of the...