I read the ReactJS Guide to main concepts and like it.
I use Django for sending HTML from the server to the client and redirect-after-post works for several years.
I am a bit unsure concerning form handling:
I would like to validate the user input on the server with the form library (since validating on the client could be circumvented by an evil user).
Imagine you have a simple form without a state.
Does it make sense to use react here?
The django form library is so simple that using react would make it more complicated. At least that’s what I think at the moment (I have only little React experience up to now).
What benefit would React give me for simple stateless forms?
Whitesell Standard Answer #1 ™ - “It depends.”
I think the question really comes down to needs and environment.
If your objective is to build a single-page app that is mobile-friendly, you might be better off starting out with something like React.
On the other hand, if you’re building a fairly straight-forward data-entry type application, maybe React isn’t the right choice.
I will absolutely agree that some type of data validation must be performed on the server side. I would never suggest that you can accept any unverified data from the outside. That doesn’t change regardless of what you’re doing.
But it seems rare to me that one would encounter this question outside a larger context of the longer term goals and target environment, both in terms of development and eventual usage.
Ken