#Dynamic website examples on javascript how to#

Once there, start your development server: npm run devĪnd once the server is ready, you can open up in your browser where you can now see your new Next.js app! New Next.js app How to build a Next.js app Open up the directory you’d like to create your project in and run: npx create-next-app my-static-nextjs-appĪfter the installation is complete, you can navigate to your new project directory: cd my-static-nextjs-app Getting started is as simple as running a single line in the terminal. The only requirements for this is that you have Node installed with npm and the ability to use a terminal to run commands. To get an idea of how this works, we can quickly create a new Next.js app. How to statically generate an app with Next.js While it doesn’t do it by default, Next.js also provides the ability to export the app into static files into a separate directory after the app has been built.įirst, you would run the next build command to build the app, then you would run next export which, by default, makes the app available as static files in the out directory. If you use getServerSideProps, Next.js will know that the app requires a server to render those pages.Īlongside a deployment solution like Vercel that will automatically handle configuring a server, Next.js will load any of the data when someone requests the page from the server.

If you only use getStaticProps to fetch data, Next.js will fetch that data at build time, leaving you with a completely static page. Next.js provides a few different APIs to fetch data including getStaticProps and getServerSideProps, which, depending on how they’re used, determines how Next.js will build your app. It does this by detecting how an app is fetching its data. Out of the box, Next.js will attempt to statically generate any pages that it can. The scripts still hydrate the page during this process, but ideally with fewer changes or no changes at all. This gives us the ability to serve the entire content on first load. With Static Generation, tools like Next.js try to render that page mostly like it would in the browser but at compile time. This then loads the scripts to pull the content into the page, a process also known as hydration. When the browser receives the page, it’s usually simple HTML without a lot of content. JavaScript-based web apps as we traditionally know them work by running libraries like React or scripts at run time in the browser. If you haven’t heard of Static Generation but that concept sounds familiar, you might have heard of it by its longer name Static Site Generation or its acronym SSG. The output is a bunch of static files, including the HTML file itself and assets like JavaScript and CSS. Static Generation describes the process of compiling and rendering a website or app at build time.

Statically generating an app with Next.js.

How does Next.js use Static Generation?.

While that can include building an HTML file by hand, how can we leverage static generation to build apps with modern tools? But the rise of JavaScript has opened the door to make those static sites more dynamic. Static websites are as old as the web itself.

Dynamic website examples on javascript