Architecture

This application will be built using Node.js on the backend to store our uploaded files and React on the frontend. But how do we do that? Conceptually, we need to tell React to use an Express app to feed React information and to consume the files that we have sent. To accomplish this, we use a proxy as defined in the package.json file. It basically looks something like this:

Figure 15.2 - Proxying

If you're not familiar with the idea of a proxy, essentially it means, in computing, the same thing that it does in English: an actor that does an action on behalf of another actor. It's, in essence, a middleman, and as this diagram shows it can be thought of as a middleman for our purposes. Since React and frontend JavaScript can't interact with the filesystem or do the other important things we learned about in Chapter 12, Node.js vs Python, and Chapter 13, Using Express, we need to use our abilities to tie together the frontend and backend. Hence...