Directory for shared code between client and server

[hamboomger]

Hi, loving your project so much, it really helps me to get into full stack development much easier.

I have a question about project structure, it seems like the common part for both frontend and backend is inside the client/core/src/models directory, could you please explain why did you choose this approach instead of having a separate common module in the project root directory?

[hamboomger]

And also if you have 5 minutes, could you please explain, why are we returning { redirected: false, to: targetTo } when response type is text/html?

TypeScript-MERN-Starter/client/core/src/shared/fetch.ts

Lines 60 to 66 in 33bd731

	if (contentType && contentType.startsWith(RESPONSE_CONTENT_TYPE.HTML) && response.request.responseURL) {
	// Drop the html because we use client routing instead of server routing
	let targetTo: string = response.request.responseURL;
	if (targetTo.startsWith(getHostUrl())) {
	targetTo = targetTo.substring(getHostUrl().length);
	}
	return Promise.resolve({ redirected: false, to: targetTo });

[shanhuiyang]

Hi @hamboomger , intuitively we would like to create a common folder, which can be located at the same directory with client and server.
The problem is, we built our client folder using expo/react-script so that we can get rid of many beginer-unfriendly configurations, e.g. webpack.
However this brings side effect that expo/react-script cannot recognize its parent folder. Then we have to make some trade-off like currently we do.

[shanhuiyang]

@hamboomger , because for any unhandlable routes the server responds the index.html directly, this means server leave any routes it cannot process to the client.
Look at the condition here

if (contentType && contentType.startsWith(RESPONSE_CONTENT_TYPE.HTML) && response.request.responseURL) { 

This means the case that server has the redirected url which it cannot handled happens, so client should take over the redirect action.

Usually this case happens in OAuth2 interaction.

[shanhuiyang]

By the way, I also would like to create a common folder as you suggested. So I will keep this issue opened and find a time to resolve this issue.

[hamboomger]

@shanhuiyang oh okay, now it makes sense to me. Thank you for reply :)