vike VS Next.js

Here are some collected notes of the distinctions between SSRx, Vinxi and Vike, to share with anyone else searching the web. Since my Google search came up empty, and I had to ask around on Twitter/X and GitHub to find out.

We're working on exactly this. You can already do this with Triplit but it's challenging to make an out of the box solution because each framework passes context/data different from server to client differently. There's a cool project called [Vike](https://github.com/vikejs/vike) that generalizes this pattern across SSR'd UI frameworks

Anyone have experience with https://github.com/vikejs/vike?

have you seen https://vite-plugin-ssr.com/ ? i've only browsed their docs, but AFAICT their pitch that it's a more DIY approach to a framework, where you keep a lot of control over how things are wired together.

I agree and, as the author of vite-plugin-ssr[1], that's what I recommend to my users: go for static whenever you can.

I think it's something every web developer should be aware of. Static is indeed a lot simpler than dynamic.

I've wrote more about it over here[2] (SSG = static, SSR = dynamic).

[1]: https://vite-plugin-ssr.com

Maybe vite-plugin-ssr? It's pretty unopinionated and doesn't get in your way.

Also have a look at https://vite-plugin-ssr.com/ (author here).

VPS is slightly lower level which gives you a lot more control: integrate with your existing Node.js backend (use any backend framework you want), deploy anywhere, use any React alternative (Solid, Preact, ...) and any data fetching tool (e.g. Relay can't really be used with Next.js).

The flip side is that you've to write a little bit more glue code. Although this will be alleviated by a lot with projects such as Bati[0], Stem[1], and vike-react (see Vike Rebranding[2]).

VPS also cares a ton about details, such as hooks for full control over i18n (use any i18n strategy you want), better Base URL support (VPS supports setting a different base for your server and your CDN), automatic deploy synchronisation, domain-driven file structure, polished and helpful error messages (especially the next upcoming release), ...

Detailed comparison with Next.js: [3].

If you run into any blocker then it's quickly fixed (or at least a workaround is proposed).

It supports not only SSR and pre-rendering, but also SPA in case you don't need SSR. It's going to support RSC but doesn't yet (RSC isn't ready for production).

Because it's lower level and because it's decoupled from React everything is designed in an agnostic way and with meticulous care. In other words: vite-plugin-ssr is becoming a robust foundation. There are breaking changes coming for the v1 release but beyond that chances are that there won't be any breaking change for years in a row.

In a nutshell: vite-plugin-ssr takes care of the frontend and only the frontend. You keep control over your architecture. (Whereas frameworks tend to put themselves right in the middle of your architecture restricting you in fundemetanl ways.)

Last but not least: it's powered by Vite which means blazing fast HMR.

[0] https://batijs.github.io

[1] https://stemjs.com/

[2] https://github.com/brillout/vite-plugin-ssr/issues/736

[3] https://vite-plugin-ssr.com/nextjs-comparison

Now by default, Vite doesn't do SSR. One way to do Vite+SSR is to use vite-plugin-ssr. You can scaffold an example project that does SSR based on some dynamic data:

vite-plugin-ssr

Next.js is a powerful React framework that enables developers to build server-rendered applications, static websites, and more. It's designed for production and provides features like automatic code splitting and optimized prefetching.

// source: https://github.com/vercel/next.js/blob/canary/packages/next/src/lib/worker.ts#L121C15-L129C16 for (;;) { onActivity() const result = await Promise.race(\[ (this.\_worker as any)\[method\](...args), restartPromise, \]) if (result !== RESTARTED) return result if (onRestart) onRestart(method, args, ++attempts) }

https://github.com/vercel/next.js/discussions/27666 One of them said 'renaming folder to uppercase' might cause trouble. git might not recognize case-sensetive changes by default.

Next.js has long cemented itself as one of the front runners in the web framework world for JavaScript/TypeScript projects so we’re going to be using that. More specifically we’re going to be using V14 of Next.js which allows us to use some exciting new features like Server Actions and the App Router.

Web frameworks like Next.js will usually include this feature, but do check that they set the caching headers correctly!

Vite and Next.js are both top 5 modern development framework right now. They are both great depending on your use case so we’ll discuss 4 areas: Architecture, main features, developer experience and production readiness. After learning about these we’ll have a better idea of which one is best for your project.

> It’s important to be aware of what you are getting if you go with React, and what you are getting is a far cry from what a framework would offer, with all the corresponding pros and cons.

Would you like to elaborate on that?

In my experience, with something as great, size/ecosystem-wise as React, there will almost always be at least one "mainstream" package for whatever you might want to do with it, that integrates pretty well. Where a lot of things might come out of the box with a framework, with a library I often find myself just needing to install the "right" package, and from there it's pretty much the same.

For example, using https://angular.io/guide/i18n-overview or installing and using https://react.i18next.com/

Or something like https://angular.io/guide/form-validation out of the box, vs installing and using https://formik.org/

Or perhaps https://angular.io/guide/router vs https://reactrouter.com/en/main

Even adding something that's not there out of the box is pretty much the same, like https://primeng.org/ or https://primereact.org/

React will typically have more fragmentation and therefore also choice, but I don't see those two experiences as that different. Updates and version management/supply chain will inevitably be more of a mess with the library, admittedly.

Now, projects like Next https://nextjs.org/ exist and add what some might regard as the missing pieces and work well if you want something opinionated and with lots of features out of the box, but a lot of those features (like SSR) are actually pretty advanced and not always even necessary.

Next.js: For the website and the admin dashboard

Until the time of writing, there is no official example of how to enable runtime environmental variables in a Dockerized Next.js app, as utilizing unstable_noStore would only dynamically evaluate variables on the server (node.js runtime). There is also an interesting discussion regarding this topic on GitHub.

next.js is a very popular React framework. remix-adonisjs includes more functionality through the AdonisJS backend ecosystem, and should be easier to self-host and self-manage.