Webpack 5 SSR Plugin

Key Features

• Perform SSR Process During Development: This Webpack 5 plugin facilitates Server-Side Rendering (SSR) during development, enabling efficient server-side rendering of your web applications.

• Static Page Generation with React SSR: Easily create static pages using React SSR (Server-Side Rendering) with the help of this plugin.

• Versatile SSR Support: This plugin is suitable for various SSR use cases, including SSR in Express with React Hydration on the frontend, making it adaptable to a wide range of applications.

Usage

Install

npm install webpackssrplugin

Update webpack config

const WebpackSSRPlugin = require('webpackssrplugin');
...
plugins: [
    ...
    new WebpackSSRPlugin(),
    ...
]
...

Use

In your HTML file, add the following tag to incorporate SSR into your application:

<SSR src="./path/to/app/ssr.jsx" args="./path/to/ssr.args.js" wrapperClass="app" wrapperTag="div" />

This will:

• compile ssr.jsx using esbuild
• pass the output from ssr.args.js to the default export function of ssr.jsx bundle as a parameter
• replace the <SSR /> tag with the markup build this way

Example

Basic Vanilla JS example.

• tag placed in the html file

<SSR src="./src/components/component.ssr.js" args="./src/components/component.args.js" wrapperClass="mb-2 p-4 app" wrapperTag="aside" />

• source of component.ssr.js

const serverCall = async (args) => {
    return `<p>Hi ${args?.name ?? 'user'}!</p>`;
};

export default serverCall;

• source of component.args.js

exports.default = () => {
    return {
        name: `JOHN`,
    };
};

• html output that replaces the <SSR />

<aside class="mb-2 p-4 app" ><p>Hi JOHN!</p></aside>

React example with hydration

A bit more complex example that uses fetch to get data from an API and pass it to the component as props.

• tag placed in the html file

<SSR src="./src/components/Page/page.ssr.jsx" args="./src/pages/index.args.js" wrapperClass="app" wrapperTag="div" />

• source of page.ssr.jsx

import React from 'react';
import {Page} from './components/Page';
import ReactDOMServer from 'react-dom/server';
import fetch from 'node-fetch';

const serverCall = async (args) => {
    const requestData = await fetch(args.dataAPI);
    const data = await requestData.json();

    return ReactDOMServer.renderToString(<Page {...args} data={data} />);
};

export default serverCall;

• source of component.args.js

exports.default = (envFile) => {
    require('dotenv').config({
        path: envFile,
    });

    return {
        dataAPI: `http://${process.env.APIHOST}${process.env.DATAAPI}`
    };
};

• html output that replaces the <SSR />

<div class="app">{<Page /> component SSR markup}</div>

Plugin options

• ssrTagRegex - regex used to grab the tag to be replaced by the plugin. Default:

/<SSR (.+?) \/>/g

• createDataProps - if set to true will add an additional atribute data-props to the output wrapper that will containt serilized arguments. Can be usefull for hydration. This can be overwritten by data-printdataprops="{true|false}". Defualt: false
• verbose print additional debug output. Default: false
• metaDisplay print esBuild metadata output. Default: false
• metaFile store esBuild metadata output to file. Default: false
• envFile this value will be passed as an argument to the default export from the file passed in args parameter. Can be used to require a different .env file depending on the type of build - development or production. Default: .env

<SSR /> tag attributes

• src - path to the input js file to bundle and SSR
• args - path to js file responsible for building the arguments
• spreadArgs - if true it will spread the output of args object to separate attributes
• esmFunction - when provided a function with that name will be called - this must me an async function from the export default. It also changes the bundle type from commonjs to esm if provided
• wrapperClass - class of the wrapper tag
• wrapperTag - tag type for the wrapper
• data-printdataprops - if true will print the data-props - it can overwrite createDataProps setting

Versions:

• 0.3.0 - major changes:
  • add option to pick output bundle format: ES or CommonJS
  • make it possible to not specify a wrapper around output html
  • make it possible to pass multiple arguments to the SSR functions via arguments
• 0.2.[5,6] - minor fixes
• 0.2.4 - add envFile setting
• 0.2.3 - minor fixes
• 0.2.2 - add metafile display and/or file generation for bundle
• 0.2.0 - add data-printdataprops attribute to override createDataProps for individual items
• 0.1.2 - add args["_"], add verbose configuration option
• 0.1.1 - update docs
• 0.1.0 - fix naming conventionc, change chalk version
• 0.0.1 - initial version

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