Server-Side Rendering in React.js: A Comprehensive Guide

Server-side rendering (SSR) can improve the performance and SEO of your React.js applications by rendering the initial page on the server and sending the rendered HTML to the client. In this guide, we will walk you through how to set up SSR in your React.js application using a library called Next.js.

Setting Up Next.js

Next.js is a popular framework for server-side rendered React applications. To create a new Next.js app, you can use create-next-app:

npx create-next-app@latest my-app

This will create a new Next.js application in a directory called my-app.

Pages in Next.js

In Next.js, a page is a React Component exported from a .js file in the pages directory. Pages are associated with a route based on their file name. For example, pages/about.js is associated with the /about route.

// pages/about.js

function About() {
  return <div>About</div>;
}

export default About;

When you navigate to /about, Next.js will server-render the About component and send the resulting HTML to the client.

Fetching Data for Server-Side Rendering

Next.js provides a function called getServerSideProps that you can use to fetch data on the server before rendering a page. This function should return an object with a props property, which will be passed to your page component.

// pages/posts.js

import fetch from 'node-fetch';

function Posts({ posts }) {
  // Render posts...
}

export async function getServerSideProps(context) {
  const res = await fetch('https://api.example.com/posts');
  const posts = await res.json();

  return {
    props: {
      posts,
    },
  };
}

export default Posts;

Conclusion

Server-side rendering in React.js can significantly improve the user experience of your application by reducing the time to first paint and improving SEO. Next.js makes it easy to build server-rendered React.js applications, but this guide only scratches the surface of what you can do with Next.js.

In the next post, we’ll explore how to implement routing in React.js applications. Until then, happy coding!