I think I'm starting to get it... but perhaps I can parrot back for clarification? So you setup django as usual: REST framework with the normal REST API endpoints.

For client-side, everything works as normal: The React code starts with static values for state/props that are pre-populated (ie. the return value for getInitialState was already determined during server-side rendering). Upon app updates (eg. user interaction), the app will make asynchronous calls to the correct REST endpoints -- perhaps batched, as you mention. Client-side is the "easy" part of this one. :)

For server-side rendering you have a normal HTTPresponse-returning Django view (eg. for /). That view compiles/renders the React JSX "template" in NodeJS. Only for server-side, when you call renderToString to get the initial HTML, getInitialState is actually a series of REST requests (in javascript) which are batched, sent to django, and returned (map-style) to node as JSON for initial rendering.

Two questions:

(1) Does the REST request batching get sent to a different, special endpoint for batching? Or when you say "middleware", do you mean that any REST request is capable of being a batched request via the middleware?

(2) There seems to be some nuance in structuring getInitialState (or props) so that it makes the REST calls on the server-side, but not on the client-side. I'd be curious to see how you structured that.

PS -- You might shoot me an email (in profile) since this is somewhat OT to the thread? I'm super-appreciative of your insight!