Next.js

You have looked at the basics of server-side rendering with React and you can use the project we created as a starting point for a real app.

However, you may think that there is too much boilerplate and that you are required to know too many different tools to run a simple Universal application with React.

This is a common feeling, called JavaScript Fatigue, as described in the introduction to this book.

Luckily, Facebook developers and other companies in the React community are working very hard to improve the DX and make the life of developers easier. You should have used create-react-app at this point to try out the examples in the previous chapters, and you should understand how it makes it very simple to create and run React applications without requiring developers to learn many technologies and tools.

Now, create-react-app does not support SSR yet, but there's a company called Zeit who created a tool called Next.js, which makes it incredibly easy to generate Universal applications...