AH-Next-Plugin


For booting a Next.JS React application inside of Actionhero.

Why?

Actionhero is a great server framework. Next.js is a great react+frontend framework. If you wan to have one server to run both your API and HTML frontend, this project is for you?

How?

This project works by creating an action which, when requested by a client over HTTP, passes the connection over to Next for rendering. We use an Actionhero initializer to configure the routes and Next.js server.

Configuration

Your project will likely be configured with an api and web directory at the top level. The api directory would be the Actionhero project, and web would be the next project. Since Actionhero and Next have different ways of transpiling typescript (Actionhero use typescript while Next.js uses Babel to handle .tsx files), it is important to have these 2 directories separate for the build step. This project's layout is a good example of this.

The web directory is a normal Next.JS project. No changes are needed.

To configure your Actionhero server to also run Next:

1. Add this plugin to your actionhero project npm install ah-next-plugin. Ensure you also npm install next react react-dom and npm install --save-dev @types/react-dom as these are peer dependencies of this project.

2. Include it in your config/plugins.ts.

``ts
import { join } from "path";

export const DEFAULT = {
plugins: () => {
return {
"ah-next-plugin": {
path: join(
__dirname,
"..",
"..",
"..",
"node_modules",
"ah-next-plugin"
),
},
};
},
};
`

3. Change your default route in config/servers/web.ts to be "api" rather than "file" (we want to pass all file handling over to next)
4. Change the location of config.general.paths.public (in config/servers/api.ts) to the public directory in your next.js project. Be sure to make this an array with one entry, for example: [path.join(process.cwd(), "..", "web", "public")])
5. Create a new config.general.paths.next (in config/servers/api.ts) to the location of your next.js project. Be sure to make this an array with one entry, for example: [path.join(process.cwd(), "..", "web")]) - note that it should be an array.
6. Create a new config file for next:

`ts
// from src/config/next.ts
// learn more about the next.js app options here https://nextjs.org/docs/advanced-features/custom-server

const namespace = "next";

declare module "actionhero" {
export interface ActionheroConfigInterface {
[namespace]: ReturnType;
}
}

const env = process.env.NODE_ENV ? process.env.NODE_ENV : "development";

export const DEFAULT = {
[namespace]: () => {
return {
enabled: true,
dev: process.env.NEXT_DEVELOPMENT_MODE
? process.env.NEXT_DEVELOPMENT_MODE === "false"
? false
: true
: env === "development",
quiet: false,
};
},
};
`

Learn more about the next.js app options here https://nextjs.org/docs/advanced-features/custom-server.

That's it! Now if you visit the root URL of your Actionhero project, you will see Next rendering the contents of pages/index.ts!

Deployment

In the build step of your project, be sure to also compile the next.js project. An example of the scripts from a package.json, which is uses yarn to test, lint, build, and run a project like this is below:

`json
{
"scripts": {
"build": "npm run build-api && npm run build-web",
"build-api": "cd api && rm -rf dist && tsc --declaration",
"build-web": "cd web && next build",
"start": "cd api && ./dist/server",
"dev": "cd api && ts-node-dev --transpile-only --ignore-watch=\"../web\" --no-deps --notify=false ./src/server",
"test": "npm run test-api && npm run test-web",
"pretest": "npm run lint && npm run build",
"test-api": "cd api && jest",
"test-web": "cd web && jest",
"lint": "npm run lint-api && npm run lint-web",
"lint-api": "cd api && prettier --check src//.ts __tests__//.ts",
"lint-web": "cd web && prettier --check pages//.tsx components//.tsx __tests__/*/.tsx"
}
}
`

Dev command alternative

ts-node-dev doesn't always play nice with next.js, leading to crashes after every change in ../web.
Replacing ts-node-dev with a combination of nodemon and ts-node (npm install ts-node nodemon --save-dev) should fix this issue with the following command:

`json
{
"dev": "cd api && nodemon -e js,jsx,ts,tsx --signal SIGTERM --ignore dist --watch ./src --exec \"ts-node\" --transpile-only --log-error ./src/server"
}
``