Next.js: Building Server-Rendered React Applications with Ease

Dynamic and responsive websites are user-friendly and also provide excellent user experience to the user. With its component-based architecture and effective rendering, Facebook’s React JavaScript toolkit has completely revolutionized the front-end development industry.

However, the necessity of server-side rendering (SSR) becomes clear when it comes to developing complete online apps. Here, Next.js is useful.

A robust framework called Next.js makes it simple to create server-rendered React applications. This tutorial will examine Next.js’s salient features and review a sample server-rendered React application.

What is Next.js?

Next.js is an open source javascript framework built on the React framework that allows developers to build server-rendered React web applications with low configuration we can create a website where all compilation and execution of the website will be at the server side.Next.js offers many features that make building complex web applications.

Next.js provides many features that are given below:

1. Server-Side Rendering(SSR): Performance and SEO can be greatly enhanced by using Next.js to render React components on the server side before providing the HTML to the client.
2. Automatic Code Splitting: Next.js bundles are automatically divided into smaller portions by js, ensuring that just the code required for the current page is loaded and speeding up initial page loads.
3. Client-Side Routing: Create single-page applications with seamless page transitions thanks to the framework’s straightforward and intuitive client-side routing management.
4. Static Site Generation(SSG): In order to pre-render pages at build time, Next.js allows static site creation, which is perfect for websites with a lot of content. By doing this, fewer requests will require server-side processing.
5. API Routes: The process of establishing APIs is made simpler by the creation of serverless functions within your Next.js application.
6. CSS-in-Javascript: Manage the styles of your application with ease thanks to Next.js’ built-in support for styling tools like CSS Modules and styled components.
7. Hot Module Replacement (HMR): With HMR, developers can work quickly since it enables real-time modifications without requiring a full page reload.

What is server-side rendering?

The performance and search engine optimization (SEO) of web applications are enhanced by the server-side rendering (SSR) technology used in web development. Instead of completely rendering web pages on the client side with JavaScript, SSR includes rendering them on the server and passing the pre-rendered HTML to the client’s browser.

How Server-Side Rendering Works:

1. Client Request: Whenever a user enters a URL in their browser, a request is made to the web server that is hosting the application.
2. Server Processing: The JavaScript elements of the requested page are run on the server, and HTML is produced. At this point, any data required for rendering the website is also collected from databases or APIs.
3. HTML Response: A completely rendered HTML page is returned by the server to the client’s browser. The HTML used to show the page contains the text, styling, and preliminary information.
4. Client Hydration: Once the HTML has been loaded into the client’s browser, JavaScript is run to add event handlers and make the page interactive. This procedure is frequently referred to as “hydration.”

Building a Server-Rendered React Application with Next.js

Let’s start building a basic server-rendered React application with Next.js right away. We’ll build a simple blog application that shows a list of posts.

Prerequisites

Install Node.js and npm (Node Package Manager) on your computer before we begin.

Step 1: Create a New Next.js App

npx create-next-app my-blog-app
cd my-blog-app
npm install

Step 2: Create a New Page

A routing mechanism based on files is used by Next.js. All you need to do to make a new page is to add a new file to the page’s directory. Make a ‘index.js’ file in the pages directory for our blog application.

import React from 'react';

const Home = () => {
  return (
    <div>
      <h1>Welcome to My Blog</h1>
      <ul>
        <li>Article 1</li>
        <li>Article 2</li>
        <li>Article 3</li>
      </ul>
    </div>
  );
};

export default Home;

Step 3: Start the Development Server

Start the Next.js development server by using the command line:

npm run dev

Your blog application is now accessible at http://localhost:3000.

Step 4: Add Styling

Using CSS Modules or any styling solution of your choosing, you can add styles to your components. Let’s make a CSS Module, for styling our blog list.

.list {
  list-style: none;
  padding: 0;
}

.list li {
  margin: 10px 0;
}

Conclusion

Building server-rendered React applications is made easier by the robust framework Next.js. Nextjs is one of the best options for creating high-performance web applications because of its capabilities including server-side rendering, automated code splitting, and client-side routing. Even though we’ve just touched on Next.js’ capabilities in this post, it should serve as a useful introduction to help you get started on your quest to create server-rendered React applications with no hassle. Greetings from the code!

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