Typical Patterns of Interaction between a React Frontend and a WordPress Backend

Abstract

This article reviews current practices of using React frontend with WordPress backend in a headless setup and typifies main data-transfer patterns, rendering strategies, and auth/reactivity mechanisms. Massive growth in the headless-CMS market, a leading position for WordPress, and the widespread use of React justifies this study’s relevance. The novelty of this work lies in building a three-dimensional model that integrates the data channel (REST vs GraphQL vs RPC) with rendering strategy (CSR, SSR, SSG/ISR) and authorization/update approach (Cookie + Nonce, JWT, Webhooks/Subscriptions), allowing the typical interaction patterns — over ten of them — to be classified and assessed. The significant findings indicate that REST-SPA has a minimal entry threshold due to the built-in WP-REST API but needs more caching to completely get rid of the “N+1” problem and reduce network latency; GraphQL-SPA solves aggregated request problems and also has strict typing but it adds much complexity to schema and access-control design; Next.js Solutions with SSR/ISR have both Static Generation and Incremental Updates via Webhooks or GraphQL Subscriptions. They are high performing, SEO friendly, and offer content consistency; in private scenarios, JWT authorization or request proxying is used; for headless e-commerce, CoCart is chosen; microservice REST-RPC endpoints extend platform capabilities without forking the core. This article will be helpful for architects, developers, and technical leaders choosing an optimal headless infrastructure based on React and WordPress.