App needs server to run

[DylanBulmer]

Issue:

To run the application, you have to have the server running and the server URL is hard-coded into the app.

Goal:

• Rebuild the app so all of the pages are on the client, not through the server
  • This will reduce server lag in further development and will not confuse the end-user

Steps to achieve goal:

• Start app from scratch
• Build initial page for app that asks for URL of the server
  • Use AJAX to communicate with the server
• Go to login page
  • Send login credentials with AJAX
  • Server responds with either success or error code/message; if error try again
• On Login Success go to the "Chat App"
  • Use Socket.IO to keep a connection between client and server

[EricEisaman]

Have you considered using the fetch API , as it is sleek and nicely promised. On your server you could have a Next.js endpoint, or any endpoint for that matter, which processes the login credentials. If you use Next.js, you can easily implement a Redux store where you could keep a session token and other state variables. This Redux store can be two-way bound to the Virtual DOM for maximum performance.

Here is my unsolicited plug for React/Next versus Angular. First of all React is not a framework at all. Next.js provides a highly performant minimal framework for React. Angular is a bulky opinionated framework which is inflexible and introduces a large learning curve for bringing junior developers, unfamiliar with Angular, into an existing Angular project. React/Next is extremely flexible such that even a junior developer only knowing Express apps could quickly be on board and contributing to an existing React/Next project. Lastly, I honestly like Angular, particularly the two-way data binding it provides out of the box. However, two-way data binding can be easily implemented in a React/Next application in a few quick steps.