Using Next.js for server-side rendering with Drupalfor Drupal 8 , 9 , 10 , and 11

Building upon your knowledge of using frontend frameworks like React and Vue.js with Drupal, let's delve into the benefits and implementation of server-side rendering (SSR) using Next.js. SSR can significantly improve the performance and SEO of your application by rendering pages on the server instead of in the browser.

Why Use Server-side Rendering?

Server-side Rendering offers several advantages, particularly for content-driven applications like Drupal:

• SEO Benefits: SSR generates complete HTML pages for each request, which search engines can easily crawl.
• Performance Improvement: Pre-rendering pages on the server can reduce the time to first render, making the web app faster and more responsive.
• Enhanced User Experience: SSR provides a seamless experience for users, especially on slower connections.

Setting Up Next.js with Drupal

Next.js is a React-based framework that supports server-side rendering out of the box. Let's go through the steps to set up a Next.js application to fetch and render content from a Drupal backend using JSON:API or GraphQL.

Step 1: Create a Next.js Application

First, set up a new Next.js application:

npx create-next-app my-drupal-next-app

Navigate into your project directory:

cd my-drupal-next-app

Step 2: Fetching Data from Drupal

For this setup, we'll fetch data from the JSON:API endpoint of Drupal. Install Axios for handling HTTP requests:

npm install axios

Create a page within the pages directory, say articles.js, to fetch and render Drupal data:

// pages/articles.js
import axios from 'axios';

export default function Articles({ articles }) {
  return (
    <div>
      <h2>Articles</h2>
      <ul>
        {articles.map(article => (
          <li key={article.id}>{article.attributes.title}</li>
        ))}
      </ul>
    </div>
  );
}

export async function getServerSideProps() {
  const response = await axios.get('https://example-drupal-site.com/jsonapi/node/article');
  const articles = response.data.data;
  
  return {
    props: {
      articles
    }
  };
}

This code snippet uses Next.js’s getServerSideProps function to fetch data during server-side rendering. The articles are passed as props to the component, allowing you to render dynamic content.

Advanced: Using GraphQL with Next.js

For those interested in using GraphQL, install Apollo Client and set up your project similarly to how we did in Vue.js:

npm install @apollo/client graphql

Configure Apollo Client, then use it to fetch articles in a similar manner:

// pages/articles.js
import { ApolloClient, InMemoryCache, gql } from '@apollo/client';

export default function Articles({ articles }) {
  return (
    <div>
      <h2>Articles</h2>
      <ul>
        {articles.map(article => (
          <li key={article.nid}>{article.title}</li>
        ))}
      </ul>
    </div>
  );
}

export async function getServerSideProps() {
  const client = new ApolloClient({
    uri: 'https://example-drupal-site.com/graphql',
    cache: new InMemoryCache()
  });

  const { data } = await client.query({
    query: gql`
      query {
        nodeQuery {
          entities {
            ... on NodeArticle {
              nid
              title
            }
          }
        }
      }
    `
  });

  return {
    props: {
      articles: data.nodeQuery.entities
    }
  };
}

This setup illustrates how to integrate server-side rendering with GraphQL, enhancing the fetching efficiency and rendering speed of your Next.js application.

Conclusion

Using Next.js for server-side rendering complements Drupal's robust backend capabilities, offering a seamless and swift user experience with improved SEO benefits. In our next lesson, we'll explore consuming Drupal APIs in Angular apps, further extending your toolkit for modern web development with Drupal. Stay tuned for more insights!