Server Side Rendering

with React & RemixJS

I'm J.D. Nicholls ๐Ÿ‘‹

- Open Source Contributor ๐Ÿ‘จโ€๐Ÿ’ป

- Game developer (Hobby) ๐ŸŽฎ

- Developer who loves UX ๐Ÿ’ซ

- Chocolate lover ๐Ÿซ

- Founding Full-Stack Engineer ๐Ÿ‘ท

AT

# WEB DEVS

Web Developers

- Different ways to build websites & web apps (SPA).

- Server/Static rendering is preferred over a full rehydration approach.

- These approaches affect the Performance ๐Ÿƒ

The performance of a site can vary dramatically based on a user's device capabilities and their network conditions.

โฌ‡๏ธ

Hydration is hard

Hydration or rehydration is a technique in which client-side JavaScript converts a static HTML web page, delivered either through static hosting or server-side rendering, into a dynamic web page by attaching event handlers to the HTML elements.

# PERFORMANCE

Performance

Performance should be an important criteria that defines the quality and success of new product features ๐Ÿ’ป

Why? because delivering a fast and seamless navigation experience delights users and helps turn them into loyal and returning customers โค๏ธ - Google

โฌ‡๏ธ

- Avoid regression (business impact).

- Team productivity (faster releases).

- Improves Dev satisfaction (interesting challenges).

- Performance is the art of avoiding work (some tasks are more expensive than others).

- Computational cost (time is money). ๐Ÿ’ธ

- Site speed improvements can increase revenue (Website crawlers indexing sites).

- Better SEO ranking & Engagement (first impressions matter, UX).

- Building a better web, together ๐ŸŒ

Benefits of adopting a performance culture

โฌ‡๏ธ

It represents how quickly the main content of a web page is loaded; delivering the initial HTML document as fast as possible. - Optimize LCP by Google

Largest Contentful Paint

RemixJS

Nested Routes ๐Ÿ‘€

โฌ‡๏ธ

By default all JavaScript is render-blocking. When the browser encounters a script tag that links to an external JS file, it must pause what it's doing and download, parse, compile, and execute that JavaScript. Therefore you should only load the code that's needed for the page - Optimize FID by Google

First Input Delay

โฌ‡๏ธ

Avoid inserting new content above existing content, unless in response to a user interaction. This ensures any layout shifts that occur are expected. - Optimize CLS by Google

Cumulative Layout Shift

โฌ‡๏ธ

# PERFORMANCE METRICS

Important metrics to measure

- TTFB: Time to First Byte - time between clicking a link and the first bit of content coming in. ๐Ÿ”— โฌ‡๏ธ

- FP: First Paint - the first time any pixel gets becomes visible to the user (It answers the question "Is it happening?"). ๐Ÿ–ผ๏ธ๐Ÿง

- FCP: First Contentful Paint - the time when requested content (article body, etc) becomes visible. โฌ†๏ธ๐Ÿ‘€

- TTI: Time To Interactive - the time at which a page becomes interactive (events wired up, etc). ๐Ÿ‘‰๐Ÿ–ฑ๏ธ

โฌ‡๏ธ

Using RUM tools help capture the real world performance metrics in lower tier markets

Measure Performance

Real User Monitoring (RUM) data, also known as field data, captures the performance experienced by a site's actual users. RUM data is what Google uses to determine whether a site meets the recommended Core Web Vitals thresholds.

# MEASURE PERFORMANCE
Lighthouse CI
# RENDERING

โฌ‡๏ธ

Rendering on the Web

Rendering on the Web

- Server Side Render the critical HTML.

- Reduce render blocking Javascript.

- Image optimization techniques (compression, WebP, lazy load non-critical images).

- Resize hero image; defer non critical resources.

- Optimizing third-party scripts and building microservices with single responsibility principle significantly reduced TTI and TBT.

- How to lose weight in the browser? - BrowserDiet guide

Techniques for fast load times

  • Static Site Generation /
    Pre-rendering
  • Client Side Rendering
  • Server Side Rendering

ย 

ย  And hybrid rendering techniques ๐Ÿ‘…

Rendering Options

# SSR

โฌ‡๏ธ

SSR generates the full HTML for a page on the server in response to navigation. This avoids additional round-trips for data fetching and templating on the client, since itโ€™s handled before the browser gets a response.

Server Side Rendering

Server Side Rendering

A joke about Server Side Apps

BTW, it's a joke! ยฏ\_(ใƒ„)_/ยฏ

React

Angular

BackEnd for

FrontEnd

Server Controls

.NET, Java, etc

REST APIs & JWT Tokens

Progressive Web Apps

AJAX & JSON

SOAP APIs & XML

Serverless & Microservices

Grunt, Gulp, Webpack, Rollup

SPA

Hybrid Apps

Horizontal

Scaling

VueJS

Svelte

Static Site Generation vs Server Side Rendering

SSG was introduced because servers were slow, but this is not the case anymore - Fusebit

# SEO
Search Engine Optimization

โฌ‡๏ธ

Search engine bots can easily crawl static HTML, but they still tend to have problems with indexing JavaScript-generated content.

SEO

export type LoaderData = {
  url: string;
  requestInfo?: {
    title?: string;
    description?: string;
  };
};

// Be called on the server before rendering
export const loader: LoaderFunction = async ({ request }) => {
  return json<LoaderData>({
    url: request.url,
  });
};

export const meta: MetaFunction = ({ data }) => {
  const requestInfo = (data as LoaderData | undefined)?.requestInfo;
  return {
    ...getSocialMetas({
      url: data?.url,
      title: requestInfo?.title,
      description: requestInfo?.description,
    }),
  };
};
# PRESENTING CODE

Meta tags for SEO

import { MY_ICON } from '@company/shared';

export function getSocialMetas({
  image = MY_ICON,
  url = 'https://my.company.com',
  title = 'My Company',
  description = 'We are a great company',
  charset = 'utf-8',
  viewport = 'width=device-width,initial-scale=1,viewport-fit=cover',
  keywords = 'Web, Mobile, Services, APIs, Games, WebSites',
}: {
  url: string
  image?: string
  title?: string
  description?: string
  keywords?: string,
  charset?: 'utf-8',
  viewport?: string,
}) {
  return {
    charset,
    viewport,
    title,
    description,
    keywords,
    image,
    'og:url': url,
    'og:title': title,
    'og:description': description,
    'twitter:creator': '@jdnichollsc',
    'twitter:title': title,
    'twitter:description': description,
  }
}
# PRESENTING CODE

Utils for SEO

SEO Audits

How well can search engines understand your content?

SEO audits
# ROUTES

Remix Blog Demo


- Render Nested Routes in Remix.

- Handle 404s in Remix with CatchBoundaries.

- Handle Unexpected Errors With Error Boundaries in Remix.

Routes

Back to the web standards.

# ENV VARS

Environment Variables

// constants.server.ts
declare global {
  interface Window {
    ENV: Record<string, unknown>;
  }
}

export const CDN_URL = typeof document !== 'undefined'
  ? window.ENV?.CDN_URL
  : process.env.CDN_URL;

export const LOGO_ICON = `${CDN_URL}/logo_icon.svg`;

โฌ‡๏ธ

Environment Variables are values that live on the server that your application can use. Using these from Browser is easy to accidentally leak secrets into publicly accessible files!

# ENV VARS

Load Env. Variables

export type LoaderData = {
  ENV: Record<string, unknown>;
};

export const loader = () => {
  return json<LoaderData>({
    ENV: {
      CDN_URL: process.env.CDN_URL,
    },
  });
};

export default function App() {
  const { ENV } = useLoaderData<LoaderData>();

  // window.ENV = ENV using dangerouslySetInnerHTML
}
# CACHING

Caching

Service worker caching

โฌ‡๏ธ

Caching web content helps improve upon the responsiveness of your websites by reducing the load on backend resources and network congestion.

A robust, performance-focused and full-featured Redis client for Node.js.
# CACHE STRATEGIES

Cache Strategies using SW

Cache First, falling back to network

- images

- fonts

- styles

- video/audio

Network First, falling back to cache

- routes (SSR)

// Imports Workbox from the CDN. Note that "6.2.0" of the URL
// is the version of the Workbox runtime.
importScripts('https://storage.googleapis.com/workbox-cdn/releases/6.2.0/workbox-sw.js');

if (workbox) {
  console.log(`Yay! Workbox is loaded ๐ŸŽ‰`);
  initializeWorkbox();
} else {
  console.log(`Boo! Workbox didn't load ๐Ÿ˜ฌ`);
}

function initializeWorkbox() {
  // Automatically adds an activate event listener to service worker
  workbox.core.clientsClaim();

  // registerRoutes here!
}

// This allows the web app to trigger skipWaiting via
// registration.waiting.postMessage({type: 'SKIP_WAITING'})
self.addEventListener('message', (event) => {
  if (event.data && event.data.type === 'SKIP_WAITING') {
    self.skipWaiting();
  }
});
# PRESENTING CODE

Using Workbox

function initializeWorkbox() {
  // registerRoutes here!
  const staticAssetsRoute = new workbox.routing.Route(({request}) => {
    return [
      'image',
      'font',
      'style',
    ].includes(request.destination);
  }, new workbox.strategies.CacheFirst({
    cacheName: 'static-assets'
  }));
  
  workbox.routing.registerRoute(staticAssetsRoute);
}
# PRESENTING CODE

Cache First for static assets

function initializeWorkbox() {
  // registerRoutes here!
  const mediaAssetsRoute = new workbox.routing.Route(({request}) => {
    return [
      'video',
      'audio',
    ].includes(request.destination);
  }, new workbox.strategies.CacheFirst({
    cacheName: 'media-assets',
    plugins: [
      new workbox.cacheableResponse.CacheableResponsePlugin({
        statuses: [200]
      }),
      new workbox.rangeRequests.RangeRequestsPlugin(),
    ],
  }));
  
  workbox.routing.registerRoute(mediaAssetsRoute);
}
# PRESENTING CODE

Cache First for media assets

function initializeWorkbox() {
  // registerRoutes here!
  const navigationRoute = new workbox.routing.NavigationRoute(
    new workbox.strategies.NetworkFirst({
      networkTimeoutSeconds: 3,
      cacheName: 'navigations'
    })
  );
  
  workbox.routing.registerRoute(navigationRoute);
}
# PRESENTING CODE

Network First for navigation (SSR)

self.addEventListener('install', event => {
  self.skipWaiting();

  event.waitUntil(
    // caching etc
  );
});
# COOKIES

Creating Cookies

import { createCookie } from "@remix-run/node"; // or cloudflare/deno

const userPrefs = createCookie("user-prefs", {
  expires: new Date("2021-01-01"),
});

This technique is a fundamental building block of many interactive websites that adds state so you can build authentication, shopping carts, user preferences, and many other features that require remembering who is "logged in".

A cookie is a small piece of information that your server sends someone in a HTTP response that their browser will send back on subsequent requests.

# COOKIES

Using Cookies

import { userPrefs } from '~/cookies';

const getUserPrefsCookie = (request) => userPrefs.parse(
  request.headers.get("Cookie"),
);

// Loading a cookie
export async function loader({ request }) {
  const cookie = (await getUserPrefsCookie(request)) || {};
  return json({ showBanner: cookie.showBanner });
}

// Updating a cookie
export async function action({ request }) {
  const cookie = (await getUserPrefsCookie(request)) || {};
  cookie.showBanner = false;

  return redirect("/", {
    headers: {
      "Set-Cookie": await userPrefs.serialize(cookie),
    },
  });
}
# COOKIES

Creating Session Cookies

import { createCookieSessionStorage } from '@remix-run/node';

export const globalSession = createCookieSessionStorage({
  cookie: {
    name: '__session',
    secure: true,
    secrets: [process.env.SESSION_SECRET],
    sameSite: 'lax',
    path: '/',
    maxAge: 60 * 60 * 24 * 30, // 30 days
    httpOnly: true,
  },
});

Sessions are an important part of websites that allow the server to identify requests coming from the same person, especially when it comes to server-side form validation or when JavaScript is not on the page.

# COOKIES

Using Session Cookies

import { globalSession } from '~/cookies';

const ERROR_KEY = 'error';
const MESSAGE_KEY = 'message';

async function getGlobalSession(request: Request) {
  const session = await globalSession.getSession(
    request.headers.get('Cookie')
  );
  return {
    getError: () => session.get(ERROR_KEY) as string | undefined,
    flashError: (error: string) => session.flash(ERROR_KEY, error),
    getMessage: () => session.get(MESSAGE_KEY) as string | undefined,
    flashMessage: (message: string) => session.flash(MESSAGE_KEY, message),
    commitSession: () => globalSession.commitSession(session),
    destroySession: () => globalSession.destroySession(session),
  };
}

export const action = async ({ request }) => {
  const { flashMessage, commitSession } = await getGlobalSession(request);
  flashMessage('Email verification code sent successfully');
  return redirect('/login', {
    headers: {
      'Set-Cookie': await commitSession(),
    },
  });
};

Resources

- Browser Rendering Optimization course - Building 60 FPS Web Apps.

- Up and Running with Remix - Free course by Kent Dodds.

- Frontend Performance Checklist 2021 - Performance has to be measured, monitored and refined continually.

- RemixJS examples.

Server Side Rendering with React and RemixJS

By J.D Nicholls

Server Side Rendering with React and RemixJS

Server Side Rendering with React and RemixJS

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