VueJs Server-Side Rendering (SSR)

Introduction

Server-Side Rendering (SSR) is a powerful technique that renders VueJS components directly on the server instead of the client. It generates HTML on the server and sends the pre-rendered HTML to the client. This improves SEO and also reduces the time-to-content for clients.

Syntax

To use SSR, we first need to create a new VueJS instance with the createRenderer function:

const renderer = require('vue-server-renderer').createRenderer();

Once we have our renderer object, we can use the renderToString method to render our VueJS component:

renderer.renderToString(vm, (err, html) => {
  if (err) throw err;
  console.log(html);
});

Example

// Import Vue and the component being rendered
const Vue = require('vue');
const App = require('./App.vue');

// Create a new Vue instance
const vm = new Vue({
  render: h => h(App)
});

// Render the component to HTML
renderer.renderToString(vm, (err, html) => {
  if (err) throw err;
  console.log(html);
});

Output

The output of the above example will be the HTML code of the rendered component.

Explanation

When a client requests a page, the server renders the Vue component as HTML and sends the pre-rendered HTML to the client. Once the client receives the HTML, it hydrates the component on the client-side and replaces the pre-rendered HTML with the client-side rendered component.

Use

Server-Side Rendering should be used when building applications with heavy SEO requirements, or for improving the time-to-content for users with slow network connections, e.g., mobile users on 3G or 4G networks.

Important Points

• Server-Side Rendering (SSR) is a powerful technique to render Vue components on the server.
• It generates HTML on the server and sends the pre-rendered HTML to the client.
• This improves SEO and reduces the time-to-content for clients.
• Vue provides a createRenderer function to create a new VueJS instance with SSR capabilities.
• The renderToString method is used to render the VueJS component to HTML.

Summary

Server-Side Rendering (SSR) is an important technique in web development, and VueJS provides a simple way to render components on the server-side. By pre-rendering components on the server, we can improve SEO and reduce the time-to-content for users. Understanding the syntax and use cases of VueJS SSR can help enhance the performance and user experience of your applications.