When I created raweceek.eu last year, I quickly decided to build it with React due to my familiarity with the library. However, over time I realized that using so much client-side code for such a simple website was silly. It was like using a sledgehammer to crack a nut. Even worse, older systems couldn’t display the page because browsers like IE6 and its predecessors don’t support contemporary JavaScript features. So I decided to change that.

Last month, I bought a domain: raweceek.eu. It refers to a confusing image posted by Ferrari on Twitter ahead of a Formula 1 race in 2020. The text on the image can be read as both "race week" and "rawe ceek", and it quickly became a meme in the community.

I didn't have anything specific in mind before the purchase. I wanted to create something fun, a lighthearted website that could be of use, but wouldn't require regular maintenance. And so the feature was born from the meme's name: visitors should be able to quickly see whether the current week is a race week or not!

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.