I’m currently working on a ReactJS project and need to dynamically load and integrate external components. These components are built and maintained separately but should integrate seamlessly into the main project at runtime without prior knowledge of the specific components that will be loaded.

Challenges:

Dynamic Loading: The main application does not know beforehand which external components it will need to load. These components might be updated independently of the main application.
Integration: Once loaded, these external components need to interact smoothly with the main application, possibly sharing state or using common dependencies.

I have tried using a tag to dynamically load the external components as suggested in some forums, but I encounter issues such as SyntaxError: Unexpected token ‘<‘, which I suspect is due to incorrect MIME types or the external component not being compiled properly.

Code Snippet:

javascript
Copy code
// Dynamic script loading logic
useEffect(() => {
const script = document.createElement(‘script’);
script.src = “URL_TO_EXTERNAL_COMPONENT”;
script.async = true;

script.onload = () => {
    // Assuming the component exposes some global identifier
    if (window.ExternalComponent) {
        setExternalComponent(window.ExternalComponent);
    }
};

document.body.appendChild(script);

return () => {
    document.body.removeChild(script);
};

}, []);

Questions:

1. What is the best practice for dynamically loading and integrating external React components?
2. How can I handle the SyntaxError: Unexpected token ‘<‘ error effectively?
3. Are there more efficient approaches or tools/frameworks that facilitate this integration, possibly using Webpack Module Federation or other microfrontend architectures?

Any insights or examples would be greatly appreciated!