OpenAPI code generation with Go server and React app

When I created this blog last summer, I had several goals in mind: to acquire new skills, learn about fresh technologies, and have fun in the process. Its simplicity allowed me to rewrite the project multiple times using different programming languages and libraries: Rust with Axios, Java with Next.js, Java with Thymeleaf, and finally, Golang with React. While the first two options reduce the amount of code by handling both the service logic and the HTML rendering, they also take on too much responsibility in this way. Not that this is wrong by definition, but I prefer to separate these concerns.

However, this approach increases the workload. I had to build models on both sides, consider not only the controllers but also the client implementation, where changes on either side can break the integration. In this post, I want to explore a way to eliminate this overhead and explain how to generate code for a Go server and React client based on an OpenAPI specification. The idea is not limited to this stack, it can be easily applied elsewhere with suitable tools.

The full demo project is available on GitHub.