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Server-side Rendering with React and Next.js: A Comprehensive Guide

If you're building a React app, it's important to consider its performance and SEO. One way to achieve this is by implementing server-side rendering (SSR), which means rendering the initial HTML on the server instead of the client. This can greatly improve the time to first paint and the time to interactive.

In this comprehensive guide, we'll be looking at implementing server-side rendering in a React app using Next.js, a popular React framework that comes out-of-the-box with SSR support.

What is Server-side Rendering (SSR)?

Simply put, server-side rendering is the process of rendering your React app on the server before sending it to the client. The client then receives an already rendered HTML document, which they can view without any JavaScript processing. SSR enhances performance and accessibility, enables search engines to crawl the app for SEO purposes, and the app can handle user browser history by sending a pre-rendered version that works without any JavaScript.

Why Use Next.js for SSR?

Next.js is a popular React framework that offers several benefits when it comes to building SSR apps. These benefits include:

• Out-of-the-box server-side rendering support
• Automatic code splitting for efficient resource handling
• Built-in page-based routing
• API routes for serverless functions
• Optimizations for performance, development, and production builds.

Next.js uses React components to build applications, with each component representing a specific part of the user interface. By using Next.js, React developers have a much easier time server-side rendering their apps.

Implementing SSR with Next.js

Implementing SSR with Next.js is easy, thanks to its built-in support for it. Here's a basic summary of the steps you would take:

1. Create a new Next.js app using npx create-next-app.
2. In the pages folder, create a new page or modify an existing one.
3. Export a getServerSideProps function in the page component, which fetches data and returns it as props.
4. Use the fetched data in the component and modify the UI.
5. Run the app using npm run dev or npm run build to create a production build.

Here is an example implementation of the _app.js file using a layout component to render all pages in the app.

import React from "react";
import Layout from "../components/Layout";

function MyApp({ Component, pageProps }) {
  return (
    <Layout>
      <Component {...pageProps} />
    </Layout>
  );
}

export default MyApp;

Here is an example implementation of the getServerSideProps function in the index.js file that fetches data from an external API and returns it as props to the component.

export async function getServerSideProps(context) {
  const res = await fetch(`https://api.example.com/data`);
  const data = await res.json();
  return {
    props: {
      data,
    },
  };
}

function Home({ data }) {
  return (
    <div>
      <h1>Hello World</h1>
      <p>Data: {JSON.stringify(data)}</p>
    </div>
  );
}

export default Home;

After fetching data, you can pass it down as props to the component, just like you would with traditional client-side rendering. This will enable you to implement components with data fetching on the server-side as well.

Conclusion

Implementing server-side rendering using Next.js can greatly improve your React app's performance and SEO. With Next.js automatic code splitting, page-based routing, and built-in support for server-side rendering, you can easily create optimized and performant React apps.

If you're interested in learning more about Next.js, we recommend checking out their official documentation.

With SSR implementation in place, your webapp will be SEO friendly and easily accessible by a vast majority of users.