I've built both SPA and traditional fullstack applications similar to the mentioned architecture (although I prefer Python over PHP).
Fullstack is a fraction of the complexity, with much more power. You can even use a simple library like PJAX to get all the same speed boosts an SPA offers without introducing any of the additional complexity.
To be honest, I don't see what React offers beyond what you get with a templating language like Handlebars, and a few lines of jQuery for initializing components.
This is, of course, for database heavy applications where each action requires the backend. If you're building a game, or an app that's mostly offline, SPA can be helpful.
I've built both SPA and traditional fullstack applications similar to the mentioned architecture (although I prefer Python over PHP).
Fullstack is a fraction of the complexity, with much more power. You can even use a simple library like PJAX to get all the same speed boosts an SPA offers without introducing any of the additional complexity.
To be honest, I don't see what React offers beyond what you get with a templating language like Handlebars, and a few lines of jQuery for initializing components.
This is, of course, for database heavy applications where each action requires the backend. If you're building a game, or an app that's mostly offline, SPA can be helpful.