blog-react

A small blog client in React 19, Vite 8, TypeScript and Tailwind CSS v4 — post list, post page with rendered markdown, login, and an editor with a publish toggle. No component library, no state framework. It works against any backend of the devai.io blog engine series (they all implement the same API).

Run

Get it: git clone https://git.devai.io/templates/blog-react.git

docker compose up --build

Open http://localhost:8081. The app expects a blog API on http://localhost:8080 — start one of the backend siblings first (e.g. docker compose up --build in blog-go-postgres), then create a user, since there is no sign-up page:

curl -X POST localhost:8080/auth/register -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{"email":"me@example.com","password":"secret123"}'

Hot-reload dev server (Node 24), same API on :8080:

npm ci
npm run dev        # http://localhost:5173

How it works

The browser only ever talks to one origin. The SPA calls /api/...; in the container nginx forwards /api/* to API_URL, and npm run dev does the same through Vite's proxy — so the API needs no CORS setup.

• API_URL (runtime, default http://host.docker.internal:8080, no trailing slash) — where nginx sends /api/*. Set it in .env or the environment; no rebuild needed. On Linux, a host firewall (firewalld, NixOS) may block containers from reaching the host — allow the Docker bridges, or point API_URL at the API directly.
• VITE_API_URL (build time, default /api) — the base URL compiled into the bundle. Set it to a full URL only if the SPA should call an API directly, and that API must then send CORS headers.

Auth: POST /auth/login returns a JWT. The client keeps it in memory, mirrors it to localStorage (blog_token) so a reload stays signed in, and sends Authorization: Bearer <token> on every request. Log out clears both.

Markdown is rendered by a ~100-line parser in src/markdown.tsx that builds React elements — never an HTML string — and only turns http(s):, mailto: and relative links into anchors, so a post body cannot inject script.

The API never returns unpublished posts, so the editor keeps a freshly saved draft open; tick Published and save again to make it public.

API calls used:

POST   /auth/login          {email, password} -> {token}
GET    /posts               -> [{id, title, slug, excerpt, published_at}]
GET    /posts/{slug}        -> full post
POST   /posts        (auth) {title, body} -> post (unpublished)
PUT    /posts/{id}   (auth) {title?, body?, published?} -> post
DELETE /posts/{id}   (auth) -> 204

Layout

src/api.ts              typed fetch client + token handling
src/markdown.tsx        dependency-free, injection-safe markdown → React
src/App.tsx             layout + routes (/, /posts/:slug, /login, /write, /edit/:slug)
src/pages/              PostList, PostDetail, Login, Editor
vite.config.ts          React + Tailwind plugins, dev proxy /api → :8080
nginx.conf.template     SPA fallback + /api proxy; API_URL filled in at start-up

Deploy

Push to your own GitHub repo and the shipped workflow (.github/workflows/ci.yml) tests the compose stack, publishes the image to GHCR, and — once you set the DEPLOY_HOST / DEPLOY_USER variables and DEPLOY_KEY secret — deploys it to your server over ssh. Set API_URL in /srv/blog-react/.env on the server to reach your API.

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Part of devai.io — the blog frontend series, one API and four clients: blog-react, blog-angular, blog-dart, blog-flutter.