NextJS with Drupal
Vijay Kumar?
Senior Front-end Developer at Altudo | NextJS | ReactJS | Node JS | TypeScript | JavaScript Advance | Tailwind | Storybook I AI | GraphQL | Accessibility | ReactQuery | Responsive | Headless XMC, Drupal
Next.js gives you the best developer experience with all the features you need for production:?hybrid static & server rendering, TypeScript support, smart bundling, route pre-fetching, and more.?No config needed.
Next.js?is an open-source framework built on Node.js that allows you to create React applications that you can render on the server. It provides out-of-the-box tooling and configuration you need to build fast, SEO-friendly React apps.
Next.js is widely used by the biggest and most popular companies all over the world like Netflix, Uber, Starbucks, or Twitch. It’s also considered as one of the?fastest-growing React frameworks, perfect to work with static sites – which was the hottest topic in the web development world lately.
Benefits of Using Next.js
Next.js is a React wrapper which means it extends React's code syntax. React developers can therefore pick it up quite easily. And like React, Next.js has the create-next-app command that you can execute to scaffold a new Next app quickly.
Run the following command in the terminal, and Next.js, will install the necessary packages and create the files to get you started.
npx create-next-app your-next-app-name
Pre-Rendering
JavaScript frameworks like React, Angular, and Vue?popularized client-side rendering. This is a rendering method where the server sends the HTML shell and a JavaScript bundle. That code then runs in the browser, updating the document in a process called hydration.
Since rendering happens on the user's device, CSR applications can be slow. Next.js provides a solution through pre-rendering. Instead of building the UI on the client side, Next.js builds it in advance on the server.
There are two types of pre-rendering:
1.??Server-side rendering (SSR)
2.??Static Site Generation (SSG)
In SSR, the server builds the HTML, fetches all the dynamic content, and then sends it to the browser. The server does this for every incoming request. SSR is, therefore, best used for constantly changing data.
SSR pages can be slow depending on the amount of data the application needs to fetch from the server and the server performance level. Through getServerSideProps() in Next.js, you can use SSR only for pages that need it.
With SSG, the application prefetches all the data during build time. It then generates HTML pages and serves them for multiple requests. It’s very fast because, once the server has generated all the pages, a CDN can cache and serve them.
Because of this, SSG is perfect for static pages like landing pages. For static pages that?consume data from APIs, Next.js allows you to fetch the data during build time using getStaticProps().
Both of these rendering methods have advantages. Depending on the use case, Next.js allows you to mix and match them on a page-to-page basis.
Built-In Routing
Next.js uses a file-based routing system. The server automatically converts all the files saved in the Pages folder to routes. This is unlike React applications that require installing?React router?and configuring it.
Furthermore, React supports client-side routing through the <Link/>
component. It also prefetches the pages whose links are in the viewport. This is only for pages using SSG, but even then, this feature makes navigating from one page to another seem very fast.
Automatic Code Splitting
Code splitting refers to dividing the bundle files into chunks that you can lazy load on demand. Next.js automatically handles code splitting. Next.js automatically splits each file in the Pages folder into its own bundle. Additionally, any code shared between the pages is bundled into one to prevent downloading the same code.
Code splitting reduces the initial load time since the browser has to download only a small amount of data.
Built-In Image Optimization
Heavy images can slow down your site and lower its Google rankings. With Next.js, you can use the image component to optimize images automatically.
import Image from 'next/image'
This component serves correctly sized images and?modern formats like webp?if the browser supports it. Images are also loaded only when a user scrolls them into view. This optimizes the page speed and saves space on the user's device.
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Built-In CSS Support
Next.js supports?CSS modules?and Sass out of the box. You don't need to spend extra time configuring it and can go straight to writing CSS styles. Next.js also comes with styled-jsx which allows you to write CSS directly inside your component.
SEO Benefits
Next.js is its SEO efficiency.
UX Benefits
User experience plays a key role in the success (or failure) of digital businesses. Luckily – thanks to Next.js – you can build a fully customized user experience. Let’s see what it really means.
Business Benefits?
Next.js websites are super-fast, easy to scan, and provide a great user experience and that’s why Google will favor them above others and rank them higher.
Growing Community
Since Next.js is built on React, it is gaining popularity quite fast. There is, therefore, a growing community of developers willing to help if you get stuck. This, combined with excellent documentation, ensures that even beginners can easily get started with Next.js.
When Should You Use Next.js?
One of the best things about Next.js is its rendering options. You are not tied to CSR, SSR, or SSG and can choose which pages you want to render on the server side, client-side or which ones you want to be entirely static.
Because of this, you can customize how each page in your application renders based on its needs. For instance, you can render pages that rely on constantly changing data using SSR and render a static page like the login page using SSG.
What can you Build with NEXT.JS?
With Next.js you can build a number of digital products and interfaces such as:
Next.js for Drupal, or Next-Drupal provides a path to replace your Drupal front-end with Next.js while retaining key Drupal editing features: the best of both worlds.
Instant preview within Drupal: Content editors want to see the work they do when they publish it, not five or ten minutes later. We provide an instant preview of your Next.js site within the editing workflow. Your editors will love this!?
Keep your favorite Drupal editing features: Menu items, views, search, translations, revision previews, draft content, and content moderation are all supported! You do not have to give up your editing experience when you use Next-Drupal.
Familiar content architecture: Create custom content architecture schemas using Drupal fields, but leave the myriad of modules and clunky twig template engines behind.?Your developers will LOVE this!
Gated content: Our solution is fully integrated with Roles, Permissions, and the user login system. You can use the Drupal login system to provide gated content on your Next.js front-end.
Multisite and Multiple Views: Hosting many sites within one Drupal installation has been upgraded. Using our solution, you can host as many sites as you want. You can push to multiple Next.js front-ends, including digital displays beyond the traditional browser.
The age of monolithic software that does everything is getting old. PHP and Mysql are not the sexy new technologies they once were. Bottom line:
Next.js and Drupal go together like peanut butter and jelly!
This is why we built next-drupal for progressive adoption: decouple your Drupal site page by page, content type by content type, one at a time.
Live working Demo URL of Drupal with Next Site is : https://demo.next-drupal.org/