Chapter 5 Appendix 1:

5.1 Compiling JSX on the fly

If you do not want to waste time with node.js, JSX can be compiled on the fly inside the browser. On downloads page of the React homepage (https://facebook.github.io/react/downloads.html), select the ‘Starter Kit’, download and unzip the archive. Among the files you just downloaded, there should be one named JSXTransformer.js. To compile JSX on the fly, include *JSXTransformer.js in ascript‘ tag inside your html page before you include any scripts that contain JSX. You also need to add the type=”text/jsx” to any script includes that contain JSX. In the end the includes should look like this:

<script src="react.js"></script>
<script src="JSXTransformer.js"></script>
<script type="text/jsx" src="yourcode.js"></script>

This method is not recommended for production deployments, as JSX is going to be compiled every time the user loads the page. Modern frontend workflows include at least concatenation and minification steps to create te production build from the working source code. An additional step to precompile JSX will not add much overhead, so you definitely should be precompiling.

5.2 Installing node.js