It goes without saying that React is an excellent choice for building high-quality web applications. However, as things become more complex, you’ll need to learn about client-side routing, page layout, and so on. Next.js is a universal JavaScript framework that runs in both the browser and the server. It offers developers an easy way to get started, and since it uses React for templating, it is also a straightforward way for developers with React experience to get productive fast. One of its strong points is that it handles server-side rendering excellently, and it integrates well with Express.
It goes without saying that React is an excellent choice for building high-quality web applications. However, as things become more complex, you’ll need to learn about client-side routing, page layout, and so on. At some point you’ll want your pages to load faster. Often times, this is where things can become difficult.
Next.js is a universal JavaScript framework that runs in both the browser and the server. It offers developers an easy way to get started, and since it uses React for templating, it is also a straightforward way for developers with React experience to get productive fast.
One of its strong points is that it handles server-side rendering excellently, and it integrates with Express just well. Oh, how I love Express.
But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Let’s talk about why you need server-side rendering in the first place. Then we’ll start building things.
What is server-side rendering, exactly?
Server-side rendering was the conventional method for getting your HTML up onto a screen. This refers to using a server environment to get your HTML up to the browser.
So why the fuss if it’s a conventional method that’s been around forever?
Remember the introduction of MVC (model, view, controller) concept that caused some concern? Basically, there was some disagreement that eventually brought about the rise of JavaScript frameworks for rendering views.
So what has this got to do with anything?
Soon enough, a problem emerged: the JavaScript frameworks only displayed a bunch of divs in the browser, using DOM manipulation to do its work around the browser. This meant that the user had to wait longer to see anything. It can also impact SEO if crawlers can’t see the content of the page quickly.
One solution was to render the JavaScript files from the server before returning to its output to the server.
And now you know.
Read the corresponding blog post: https://blog.logrocket.com/how-to-build-a-server-rendered-react-app-with-next-express-d5a389e7ab2f/
#react #next #express #web-development #developer
