Kirill Konshin - Next.js Quick Start Guide: Server-side rendering done right

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Kirill Konshin is the principal software developer at RingCentral, the world's leading Cloud communications provider. He is a highly experienced professional in full-stack web engineering with more than 10 years of experience, proficient in all the most recent web technologies. He is also an active open source contributor to React-related projects. You can follow him on Medium.

Chris van Rensburg has been involved in JavaScript since the very birth of the language from its early progenitor, LiveScript, that was developed in the 90s by Netscape. While then working for a small start-up in San Mateo, Chris was part of a pitch to Netscape executives on how web pages could be made interactive by the addition of event handler attributes to HTML tags for invoking actions. Chris went on to develop high-level JavaScript frameworks, culminating in the UIZE JavaScript Framework.

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This book guides developers from building simple, single-page applications to fully-fledged, scalable, and reliable client-server infrastructures that enable code sharing between client and server, universal modules, and server-side rendering. This book explains the best practices for building sites using Next.js, enabling readers to build SEO-friendly and superfast websites.

Next.js is a rising star of modern JavaScript. It is a powerful tool that can save a lot of time by doing all the under-the-hood processing required to bring a universal applications to life.

This book is for skilled professionals seeking a comprehensive guide on how to build a flexible, scalable, and well-designed universal JavaScript application with server-side rendering capabilities using Next.js.

This book will also help developers discover what server-side rendering is and get to grips with what the bleeding edge of the technology has to offer in its current state.

We will guide users through the following challenges:

• Performance of single-page applications
• SEO
• Blazing-fast rendering of the initial page when a customers visit the website
• Maximum reuse of modules on client and server sides
• What server-side rendering is, how it helps, and how to do it right

, Introduction to Server-Side Rendering and Next.js, explains the basics of frontend development, problem definition, what frameworks are available, and what problems they solve, what server-side rendering is, and why it is needed. This chapter explains the benefits of Next.js.

, Next.js Fundamentals, explains the fundamental things about building JavaScript apps and React apps in particular. It guides the reader through installation and the development/build life cycle of the Next.js application. You'll learn how to create website pages and wire them together through the website navigation. After that, styling and rich content approaches are explained.

, Next.js Configuration, will go into Webpack and Babel. It is a small chapter but definitely one worth mentioning, because it is very useful for advanced cases.

, Next.js Data Flow, explains the purpose of all JS applications: talking to the backend. We show different approaches, including vanilla Next JS flow, with no frameworks, which is useful for understanding the essence of interaction before moving on to look at more advanced techniques.

, Application Life Cycle Handlers and Business Logic, demonstrates the most important and frequently asked questions about React-based application architecture and patterns. We explain how to design and implement the core modules, such as logging and authentication, and then move on to more complex solutions for access control and business rules management.