All About Server-Side Rendering in Next.js

Introduction

Server-Side Rendering (SSR) is a powerful feature of Next.js that enhances the performance and SEO of your React applications. Here, we'll explore the concept of SSR in Next.js and walk through practical examples.

What is Server-Side Rendering?

Server-side rendering is known as rendering your React components on the server before sending the HTML to the client. As a result, search engines can more quickly index your content and the first page loads more quickly.
             

Getting Started

To activate SSR in Next.js, use the following commands to launch a new project:

Pages and SSR: 

Each file in the pages directory becomes a route in Next.js. You can export the async function getServerSideProps from the file corresponding to a page in order to enable SSR for that particular page.
Let's create a simple SSR-enabled page. In the pages/ssr.js file:

In this example, the getServerSideProps function fetches the server time and passes it as a prop to the SSRPage component. This data will be pre-rendered on the server and sent to the client.

Testing SSR Locally: 

Launch the development server for Next.js:

Open your browser and navigate to http://localhost:3000/ssr. The page that displays the server time is rendered.

Benefits of SSR in Next.js:

• Enhanced Performance: SSR speeds up the initial page load time because the HTML is generated on the server.

• Search Engine Optimisation (SEO): Because the HTML is present in the first response, search engines can quickly index the content.

• Dynamic Data Fetching: To provide dynamic content with each request, use ‘getServerSideProps’ to fetch data from databases or APIs.

Conclusion

To sum up, Next.js's Server-Side Rendering (SSR) technology is a game-changer for creating web apps that put search engine optimization and performance first. Next.js allows developers to create faster-loading pages with important content easily accessible, improving user experience and search engine discoverability by moving the rendering process from the client to the server.

While data fetching and dynamic content rendering are made easy with the use of functions like getServerSideProps, maintainability is guaranteed by the structured approach of the framework.

While SSR has many advantages, developers must carefully plan their implementation and consider factors like server load. SSR is a useful tool in the current web development toolkit because, as we've seen in this guide, it can be used to create highly responsive and search engine-friendly applications.