Why Next.js API? - javascript

Im starting with Next and I'm kind of confused about how it works the SSR and the API. When should I use the API folder in pages instead of having my own server with a database? Does Next server for SSR will have any conflict if I had my server in Node for example?

The point is to provide a simple, scalable alternative to running your own server.
When you deploy API routes via Vercel, it will provision AWS Lambda functions on the backend to form your API.
These functions are sort of like individual snips of code that get run on demand when you have traffic.
You're right in the sense that there isn't too much difference. Just an alternative way to deploy your API. The main purpose is to make it easy and reduce the management associated with running a server.
For most use cases, it should work well but please note it doesn't have support for Websockets.
You're free to use API routes, or your own server. It doesn't matter and won't impact on the SSR.

Related

Can I create web api using express.js and not have node.js installed?

I am currently in the process of creating a portfolio website for myself but due to hosting restrictions, I cannot make use of Node.js.
I know Angular can run on any web server, but is it possible to make use of Express.js to create web api's with relying on Node.js to run these web api's using Express.js?
If not, is there an alternative solution to create web api's that I can call using Angular and later for my mobile version of my website?
Please note that my shared hosting runs using cPanel.
As per definition Express.js, or simply Express, is a web application framework for Node.js so you can't do that. Alternatives would be to use a different backend language.
That also depends if your server supports them, for example, you can go with .NET CORE
You cannot use Express without NodeJS by definition so you have to deploy your backend somewhere else in you want to use it.
I suggest giving a look Firebase: you could write your backend using http cloud functions in express without paying anything until a reasonable amount of traffic (after that, is pretty cheap). You could also get rid of cPanel and deploy your frontend there via Firebase hosting.
Maybe you can try to build at first a web application with express. Of course you can create a web app without express if you need it. With express and Node.js I created a MySQL REST API. With HTML and Ajax you can fetch the Data from the API. So you can create two applications. One application where you need to run Node.js because it`s much easier to create a REST API with express. The second one is fully without Node.js.
Maybe there are better solutions, but inside each Web Application you can than but you can then access this API in any web application using jQuery. It doesn't matter if it is written with PHP, ASP.Net Core, Java EE / EE4J. You can also access this API in Ruby, Angular, React, Vue etc. using an AJAX request.
In some scenarios you can't start Node.js as a server because an application is already running on apache2 or nginx. There this would be a workaround to use something like this. For example, one could also integrate applications with HTML+JS in a CMS system that accesses other database tables and thus extend such a system without an iframe.
So can be helpful for few scenarios. Now just doesn't get around the actual goal of doing without Node.js completely or even express. But why are there REST APIs? So that you can query the data and incorporate it somewhere else. Otherwise you would have to build a REST API with another technology. Especially in the example of accessing MySQL with JavaScript, this would not be quickly feasible.
If you are looking for a similar solution to separate the web app and the REST API, but you don't need Node.js, then you should really build a REST API with .Net Core or with another technology, depending on what is possible and installed on your server. It could be Java or PHP behind it or Ruby.
The API that provides the REST access does not have to be written in JavaScript. You only need to be able to access it with JavaScript. So you can use many different approaches to access JSON data. I hope that in the short time with my bad English I have explained the basic idea, how to proceed stylistically and where advantages exist in REST interfaces.
With this, it should be self-explanatory that you don't have to use NodeJS and Express, but with JavaScript it's a pleasant solution. Only you have to ask yourself if a JavaScript application has to provide this interface at all or if in the end only a JavaScript application has to access this interface. Very big difference.
For backend rest api you can use golang with gorilla framework. Golang simple keyword and easy to learn.best important point is performance. If your server support golang you can use golang for backend..
ExpressJS is NodeJS framework so it's impossible to create an API without NodeJS.
Angular is front-end framework so you can host it on web hosting server.
If you need to create back-end APIs, you can use other clouding host servers that support NodeJS.
It's fairly simple to build this with just the net/http package. Set up a router that handles various commands and deal with the response accordingly.

How to make server-side API requests?

I'm working in javascript(React) to create a web app that makes use of multiple APIs(Spotify, Twitch, Youtube) and so far I have been using Axios to make
the REST calls successfully. But now I have begun running into Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS) errors and I have been told
that I need to make calls to external APIs from a server instead of from my client. I've never made API calls from a server and
have some questions:
Everything I am doing is currently running locally using Node and I dont have a "server" unless that's what Node counts as. Do I need to get a "server"?
Should I be creating my own API and hosting it on some server so that I can call that API from my javascript code?
How do I create my own API if that's what I should be doing?
Is there a different language I will need to use to make server-side api calls?
Everything I am doing is currently running locally using Node and I dont have a "server" unless that's what Node counts as. Do I need to get a "server"?
React comes with a bunch of development tools that use Node, including a development server. It isn't designed for production use though, so you shouldn't use it for that.
Should I be creating my own API and hosting it on some server so that I can call that API from my javascript code?
Yes.
How do I create my own API if that's what I should be doing?
Write some code which accepts an HTTP request, gets the data you want to respond to it with, and makes an HTTP response.
Express.js is a popular way to do this in Node. You can combine it with Next.js to apply server-side rendering for your React app (resulting in better performance, accessibility, reliability, and SEO).
Is there a different language I will need to use to make server-side api calls?
You can write your server-side code in any language you like.
I assume you are hosting your application on a development nodeJS server, therefor you
will need an extra server.
Yes. Create an API and call it from your frontend.
Create a server which takes http requests and does your stuff according to the route
chosen.There are many examples on how to do this with for example nodeJS+Express on the
internet.
The Language you use for the server side is your choice.

Javascript server-render libraries with non-JS REST APIs

Are server-rendered frameworks/libraries (such as Nextjs for React, Nuxt for Vue) and non-JS REST API backends (i.e. Java, Django, Go etc.) mutually exclusive or can they be used alongside?
Specifically, I am using Go for building a REST API at the backend and I wonder if I have to give it up for having the pages server-rendered.
It's encouraged to use a separate API server with next.js even if you're using JavaScript for both. It's common to have the api on api.example.com, and to have the next.js app talk to it whether it's doing server-side or browser rendering.
If you want to have them on the same domain so you can cookies directly, you can use path aliases in now.sh, a Heroku-like PaaS from Zeit, the developers of Next.js. These can be set up in development with now-server. This can also be done with reverse proxies in nginx, apache, netlify, and CloudFront, or using path-based routing in AWS's Application Load Balancer.
These are two different concerns, really: Vue and React are JavaScript frameworks. They wouldn't run on your Go-based server application.
There's nothing to stop you from rendering HTML in a Go application, but a Go server is not going to run a JavaScript framework. If it did, it would likely require extra scaffolding, and at that point you might as well set up a NodeJS server to handle rendering those routes.

Is a Spring Boot microservice with a non-Java front-end client possible?

I've implemented the shell of a microservices-based REST API application. I have simply followed the guides on Pivotal Springs' own documentation using Eureka and Ribbon for load balancing. Everything works. I have a discovery server with a handful of independent services which can register with the discovery server.
Now, my problem is that I might prefer not to write my client-side app in Java - maybe Angular or node.js, etc. However, the load balancing and connecting to the discovery server is all done in Java in the examples I've followed.
Is it possible to use JavaScript to do the same things that the Eureka client does with the Spring Boot microservices so that I don't need to be constrained in my choices of browser client technology? Does anybody have any advice for how this should be approached? I had difficulty finding any articles that cover this, to be honest.
Yes. Definitely you can choose technology of your choice for developing front end application. From your front end application, you make calls to API endpoint that you expose via your spring boot application.
You might want to expose your services via single API gateway that will help you route requests to designated micro services using your discovery server.
Actually you should not be doing load balancing/service discover etc. in the front-end. So the question about whether it is possible in JavaScript or with which libraries is irrelevant.
Typically you'll have an API gateway or a (load balancing) proxy which works with your service registry and routes requests accordingly. In the current project we use Consul for service registry and Nginx + consul-template as proxy. We plan to migrate to some API gateway.
With this setup your front-end will connect to just one central endpoint which would do load balancing/routing to individual service instances behind the scenes. Thus your front-end will not need to implement anything like Eureka/Ribbon etc.

How to efficiently develop client-side code for a web app without installing a local backend?

One of my team members is working only on client-side (Javascript) development for a web app with a large and complex backend.
I would like to avoid the need for him install and configure a local copy of the backend.
However, I wouldn't want him to need to push every small change to the dev server just so that he can test it.
We thought about getting the client to make the requests directly to the dev server, instead of to the same domain (the localhost) but this doesn't seem practical due to cross-domain request policies and authentication problems (cookies aren't getting sent).
What are some elegant solutions for developing clients without having a local backend?
Depending on how complicated your backend is, you might be able to create a mock backend using a lightweight web framework like Sinatra. I've had some success with this technique, but the services I've been mocking have been fairly simple. In some cases the mock backend mostly serves static JSON files.
I use Charles Proxy to map the URIs of the dev server's web services to localhost (where I run a light weight web server that serves up my static development code).

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