Server Side Rendering

This page describes how to use React Spectrum with server side rendering, including frameworks like Next.js and Gatsby.

Introduction#

Server side rendering, or SSR, is the process of rendering components to HTML on the server, rather than rendering them only on the client. Static rendering is a similar approach, but pre-renders pages to HTML at build time rather than on each request. These techniques can help improve perceived loading performance and SEO. React Spectrum supports both of these approaches, either through a custom implementation or via frameworks like Next.js and Gatsby.

SSR Provider#

In React, SSR works by rendering the component to HTML on the server, and then hydrating the DOM tree with events and state on the client. This enables applications to both render complete HTML in advance for performance and SEO, but also support rich interactions on the client.

In order to make React Spectrum components work with SSR, you will need to wrap your application in an SSRProvider component. This signals to all nested React Spectrum components that they are being rendered in an SSR context.

import {SSRProvider, Provider, defaultTheme} from '@adobe/react-spectrum';

<SSRProvider>
  <Provider theme={defaultTheme} locale={yourLocaleHere}>
    <App />
  </Provider>
</SSRProvider>

import {
  defaultTheme,
  Provider,
  SSRProvider
} from '@adobe/react-spectrum';

<SSRProvider>
  <Provider theme={defaultTheme} locale={yourLocaleHere}>
    <App />
  </Provider>
</SSRProvider>

import {
  defaultTheme,
  Provider,
  SSRProvider
} from '@adobe/react-spectrum';

<SSRProvider>
  <Provider
    theme={defaultTheme}
    locale={yourLocaleHere}
  >
    <App />
  </Provider>
</SSRProvider>

Wrapping your application in an SSRProvider ensures that the HTML generated on the server matches the DOM structure hydrated on the client. Specifically, it affects four things: id generation for accessibility, media queries, feature detection, and automatic locale selection.

When using SSR, only a single copy of React Spectrum can be on the page at a time. This is in contrast to client-side rendering, where multiple copies from different parts of an app can coexist. Internally, many components rely on auto-generated ids to link related elements via ARIA attributes. When server side rendering, these ids need to be consistent so they match between the server and client, and this would not be possible with multiple copies of React Spectrum.

Media queries and DOM feature detection cannot be performed on the server because they depend on specific browser parameters that aren’t sent as part of the request. In cases where these affect the rendering of a particular component, this check is delayed until just after hydration is completed. This ensures that the rendering is consistent between the server and hydrated DOM, but updated immediately after the page becomes interactive.

Finally, when using server side rendering, the locale prop should be set explicitly on the Provider rather than relying on automatic locale selection. This could be done by using the Accept-Language HTTP header, which the browser sends to the server with the user’s desired language. You could also use an in-application setting for this if available, or separate locale-specific URLs, for example.

Next.js#

Next.js is a framework for building websites and web applications with React. It supports both server side rendering as well as static rendering. In addition to using an SSRProvider, a small amount of configuration is required to get React Spectrum’s CSS working with Next.js.

First, you’ll need to install an additional Next.js plugin:

yarn add next-transpile-modules

With this installed, add the following to your next.config.js file. This will ensure that React Spectrum’s CSS is loaded properly by Next.js. Note that packages may need to be removed or added to the config below if using an older or newer version of React Spectrum.

const withTM = require("next-transpile-modules")([
  "@adobe/react-spectrum",
  "@react-spectrum/actiongroup",
  "@react-spectrum/breadcrumbs",
  "@react-spectrum/button",
  "@react-spectrum/buttongroup",
  "@react-spectrum/checkbox",
  "@react-spectrum/combobox",
  "@react-spectrum/contextualhelp",
  "@react-spectrum/dialog",
  "@react-spectrum/divider",
  "@react-spectrum/form",
  "@react-spectrum/icon",
  "@react-spectrum/illustratedmessage",
  "@react-spectrum/image",
  "@react-spectrum/label",
  "@react-spectrum/layout",
  "@react-spectrum/link",
  "@react-spectrum/listbox",
  "@react-spectrum/menu",
  "@react-spectrum/meter",
  "@react-spectrum/numberfield",
  "@react-spectrum/overlays",
  "@react-spectrum/picker",
  "@react-spectrum/progress",
  "@react-spectrum/provider",
  "@react-spectrum/radio",
  "@react-spectrum/slider",
  "@react-spectrum/searchfield",
  "@react-spectrum/statuslight",
  "@react-spectrum/switch",
  "@react-spectrum/table",
  "@react-spectrum/tabs",
  "@react-spectrum/text",
  "@react-spectrum/textfield",
  "@react-spectrum/theme-dark",
  "@react-spectrum/theme-default",
  "@react-spectrum/theme-light",
  "@react-spectrum/tooltip",
  "@react-spectrum/view",
  "@react-spectrum/well",
  "@spectrum-icons/ui",
  "@spectrum-icons/workflow"
]);

module.exports = withTM({
  // Your Next.js configuration
});

const withTM = require("next-transpile-modules")([
  "@adobe/react-spectrum",
  "@react-spectrum/actiongroup",
  "@react-spectrum/breadcrumbs",
  "@react-spectrum/button",
  "@react-spectrum/buttongroup",
  "@react-spectrum/checkbox",
  "@react-spectrum/combobox",
  "@react-spectrum/contextualhelp",
  "@react-spectrum/dialog",
  "@react-spectrum/divider",
  "@react-spectrum/form",
  "@react-spectrum/icon",
  "@react-spectrum/illustratedmessage",
  "@react-spectrum/image",
  "@react-spectrum/label",
  "@react-spectrum/layout",
  "@react-spectrum/link",
  "@react-spectrum/listbox",
  "@react-spectrum/menu",
  "@react-spectrum/meter",
  "@react-spectrum/numberfield",
  "@react-spectrum/overlays",
  "@react-spectrum/picker",
  "@react-spectrum/progress",
  "@react-spectrum/provider",
  "@react-spectrum/radio",
  "@react-spectrum/slider",
  "@react-spectrum/searchfield",
  "@react-spectrum/statuslight",
  "@react-spectrum/switch",
  "@react-spectrum/table",
  "@react-spectrum/tabs",
  "@react-spectrum/text",
  "@react-spectrum/textfield",
  "@react-spectrum/theme-dark",
  "@react-spectrum/theme-default",
  "@react-spectrum/theme-light",
  "@react-spectrum/tooltip",
  "@react-spectrum/view",
  "@react-spectrum/well",
  "@spectrum-icons/ui",
  "@spectrum-icons/workflow"
]);

module.exports = withTM({
  // Your Next.js configuration
});

const withTM = require(
  'next-transpile-modules'
)([
  '@adobe/react-spectrum',
  '@react-spectrum/actiongroup',
  '@react-spectrum/breadcrumbs',
  '@react-spectrum/button',
  '@react-spectrum/buttongroup',
  '@react-spectrum/checkbox',
  '@react-spectrum/combobox',
  '@react-spectrum/contextualhelp',
  '@react-spectrum/dialog',
  '@react-spectrum/divider',
  '@react-spectrum/form',
  '@react-spectrum/icon',
  '@react-spectrum/illustratedmessage',
  '@react-spectrum/image',
  '@react-spectrum/label',
  '@react-spectrum/layout',
  '@react-spectrum/link',
  '@react-spectrum/listbox',
  '@react-spectrum/menu',
  '@react-spectrum/meter',
  '@react-spectrum/numberfield',
  '@react-spectrum/overlays',
  '@react-spectrum/picker',
  '@react-spectrum/progress',
  '@react-spectrum/provider',
  '@react-spectrum/radio',
  '@react-spectrum/slider',
  '@react-spectrum/searchfield',
  '@react-spectrum/statuslight',
  '@react-spectrum/switch',
  '@react-spectrum/table',
  '@react-spectrum/tabs',
  '@react-spectrum/text',
  '@react-spectrum/textfield',
  '@react-spectrum/theme-dark',
  '@react-spectrum/theme-default',
  '@react-spectrum/theme-light',
  '@react-spectrum/tooltip',
  '@react-spectrum/view',
  '@react-spectrum/well',
  '@spectrum-icons/ui',
  '@spectrum-icons/workflow'
]);

module.exports = withTM({
  // Your Next.js configuration
});

Gatsby#

Gatsby is a static site generator built with React. Gatsby works out of the box with React Spectrum without any additional configuration. For an example of a working Gatsby site using React Spectrum, see this repo.