Next.js

This guide shows you how to deploy a Next.js application to Edgio.

Example #

Next.js Commerce #

For details on using the Next.js Commerce template with Edgio, refer to our Next.js Commerce Guide.

Connector #

Edgio provides a connector for this framework. Learn more.

Supported Versions #

Edgio supports Next.js version 9 through 13.

Supported Features #

Edgio supports all of the most powerful features of Next.js, including:

• Static Site Generation (SSG)
• Server Side Rendering (SSR)
• Incremental Static Regeneration (ISR)
• Localization
• Image Optimization
• getStaticPaths (including fallback: (true|false|'blocking'))
• getStaticProps (including revalidate)
• getServerSideProps
• getInitialProps

System Requirements #

• Install Node.js 16.16.0

Sign up for Edgio #

Deploying requires an account on Edgio. Sign up here for free.

Install the Edgio CLI #

If you have not already done so, install the Edgio CLI.

1npm i -g @edgio/cli

When installing the Edgio CLI globally in a virtual environment that has Node and NPM installed globally, you may run into permission issues. In that case, you can install the Edgio CLI locally within your app using npm i -D @edgio/cli and running commands using ./node_modules/@edgio/cli instead of edgio.

If you run into permission issues while attempting to install the Edgio CLI globally on your local development machine, these may be fixed by using nvm to manage Node and NPM.

Getting Started #

Create a Next.js Application #

If you don’t already have a Next.js application, you can create one using:

1npx create-next-app@latest

Initializing your Project #

Initialize your project for use with Edgio by running the following command in your project’s root directory:

1cd my-next-app
2edgio init

This will automatically add all of the required dependencies and files to your project. These include:

• The @edgio/cli package - Allows you to control Edgio through project-local CLI.

• The @edgio/core package - Allows you to declare routes and deploy your application to Edgio.

• The @edgio/prefetch package - Allows you to configure a service worker to prefetch and cache pages to improve browsing speed.

• The @edgio/devtools package - Allows you to monitor the caching and prefetching functionality.

• The @edgio/next package - Provides router middleware that automatically adds Next.js pages and api routes to the Edgio router.

• The @edgio/react package - Provides a Prefetch component for prefetching pages.

• edgio.config.js - Contains various configuration options for Edgio.

• routes.js - A default routes file that proxies all requests to the server. Update this file to add caching or proxy some URLs to a different origin.

• sw/service-worker.js - A service worker implemented using Workbox.

Next.js Config Plugins #

If your project does not have a next.config.js file, one will automatically be added when you run edgio init. Doing so adds two plugins:

• withEdgio (required)
• withServiceWorker (optional)

If your project already has this config file, you need to add these plugins yourself.

1const { withEdgio, withServiceWorker } = require('@edgio/next/config')
2
3module.exports = withEdgio(
4  withServiceWorker({
5    // Output source maps so that stack traces have original source filenames and line numbers when tailing
6    // the logs in the Edgio Developer console.
7    edgioSourceMaps: true,
8  })
9)

withEdgio #

The withEdgio plugin optimizes the Next.js build for running on Edgio. It is required to deploy your application on Edgio and accepts the following parameters:

• edgioSourceMaps: Defaults to false. Set to true to add server-side source maps so that stack traces have original source filenames and line numbers when tailing the logs in the Edgio Developer console. This will increase the serverless bundle size but will not affect performance. If you find that your app exceeds the maximum serverless bundle size allowed by Edgio, you can disable this option to conserve space.

withServiceWorker #

The withServiceWorker plugin builds a service worker from sw/service-worker.js that prefetches and caches all static JS assets and enables Edgio’s prefetching functionality.

Edgio Devtools #

By default, Devtools are enabled on production builds of Next.js with Edgio. To disable devtools in production, add the disableEdgioDevTools flag:

1const { withEdgio, withServiceWorker } = require('@edgio/next/config')
2
3module.exports = withEdgio(
4  withServiceWorker({
5    // Output source maps so that stack traces have original source filenames and line numbers when tailing
6    // the logs in the Edgio Developer console.
7    edgioSourceMaps: true,
8    // Don't include Edgio Devtools in production
9    // More on Edgio Devtools at https://docs.edg.io/guides/devtools
10    disableEdgioDevTools: true,
11  })
12)

Running Locally #

Test your app with the Sites on your local machine by running the following command in your project’s root directory:

1edgio dev

Deploying #

Deploy your app to the Sites by running the following command in your project’s root directory:

1edgio deploy

See Deployments for more information.

Prefetching #

The edgio init command adds a service worker based on Workbox at sw/service-worker.js. If you have an existing service worker that uses workbox, you can copy its contents into sw/service-worker.js and simply add the following to your service worker:

1import { Prefetcher } from '@edgio/prefetch/sw';
2
3new Prefetcher().route();

The above code allows you to prefetch pages from Edgio’s edge cache to significantly improve browsing speed. To prefetch a page, add the Prefetch component from @edgio/react to any Next.js Link element. The following example shows you how to prefetch JSON data from getServerSideProps or getStaticProps using the createNextDataUrl function from @edgio/next/client.

1import {Prefetch} from '@edgio/react';
2import Link from 'next/link';
3import {useRouter} from 'next/router';
4import {createNextDataURL} from '@edgio/next/client';
5
6export default function ProductListing({products}) {
7  const {locale} = useRouter(); // you can omit this if you're not using localization
8
9  return (
10    <ul>
11      {products.map((product, i) => (
12        <li key={i}>
13          <Link href={product.url} passHref>
14            <Prefetch
15              url={createNextDataURL({
16                href: product.url,
17                locale, // you can omit this if you're not using localization
18                routeParams: {
19                  // keys must match the param names in your next page routes
20                  // So for example if your product page is /products/[productId].js:
21                  productId: product.id,
22                },
23              })}>
24              <a>
25                <img src={product.thumbnail} />
26              </a>
27            </Prefetch>
28          </Link>
29        </li>
30      ))}
31    </ul>
32  );
33}
34
35export async function getServerSideProps({params: {id}}) {
36  const products = await fetch(/* fetch from your api */).then((res) =>
37    res.json()
38  );
39
40  return {
41    props: {
42      products,
43    },
44  };
45}

The Prefetch component fetches data for the linked page from Edgio’s edge cache and adds it to the service worker’s cache when the link becomes visible in the viewport. When the user taps on the link, the page transition will be instantaneous because the browser won’t need to fetch data from the network.

Routing #

Edgio supports Next.js’s built-in routing scheme for both page and API routes, including Next.js 9’s clean dynamic routes. The default routes.js file created by edgio init sends all requests to Next.js via a fallback route:

1import {nextRoutes} from '@edgio/next';
2import {Router} from '@edgio/core/router';
3
4export default new Router()
5  .get('/service-worker.js', ({cache, serveStatic}) => {
6    cache({
7      edge: {
8        maxAgeSeconds: 60 * 60 * 24 * 365,
9      },
10    });
11    serveStatic('.next/static/service-worker.js');
12  })
13  .use(nextRoutes);

Preview Mode #

To be able to use Preview Mode while being able to cache the respective pages, update your routes to match the requests that contain the two cookies __prerender_bypass & __next_preview_data, and send those to serverless for rendering.

1import {Router} from '@edgio/core/router';
2import {nextRoutes, renderNextPage} from '@edgio/next';
3
4export default new Router()
5  .match(
6    {
7      path: '/:path*',
8      cookies: {
9        __prerender_bypass: /.*/g,
10        __next_preview_data: /.*/g,
11      },
12    },
13    ({cache, renderWithApp}) => {
14      cache({
15        edge: false,
16        browser: false,
17      });
18      renderNextPage('/:path*', res); // In case you're using Next.js < v12
19      // renderWithApp() // In case you're using Next.js >= v12
20    }
21  )
22  .get('/service-worker.js', ({cache, serveStatic}) => {
23    cache({
24      edge: {
25        maxAgeSeconds: 60 * 60 * 24 * 365,
26      },
27    });
28    serveStatic('.next/static/service-worker.js');
29  })
30  .use(nextRoutes);

nextRoutes #

In the above code, nextRoutes adds all Next.js routes to the router based on the /pages directory. You can add additional routes before and after nextRoutes. For example, you can choose to send some URLs to an alternate backend. This is useful for gradually replacing an existing site with a new Next.js app.

A popular use case is to fallback to a legacy site for any route that your Next.js app isn’t configured to handle:

1import {nextRoutes} from '@edgio/next';
2import {Router} from '@edgio/core/router';
3
4export default new Router()
5  .use(nextRoutes)
6  .fallback(({proxy}) => proxy('legacy'));

To configure the legacy backend, use edgio.config.js:

1module.exports = {
2  backends: {
3    legacy: {
4      domainOrIp: process.env.LEGACY_BACKEND_DOMAIN || 'legacy.my-site.com',
5      hostHeader:
6        process.env.LEGACY_BACKEND_HOST_HEADER || 'legacy.my-site.com',
7    },
8  },
9};

Using environment variables here allows you to configure different legacy domains for each Edgio environment.

rewrites and redirects #

The nextRoutes plugin automatically adds routes for rewrites and redirects specified in next.config.js. Redirects are served directly from the network edge to maximize performance.

Caching #

The easiest way to add edge caching to your Next.js app is to add caching routes before nextRoutes. For example, imagine you have /pages/p/[productId].js. Here’s how you can SSR responses as well as cache calls to getServerSideProps:

1export default new Router()
2  // Products - SSR
3  .get('/p/:productId', ({cache}) => {
4    cache({
5      // Caching it only on the edge
6      edge: {
7        maxAgeSeconds: 60 * 60 * 24,
8        staleWhileRevalidateSeconds: 60 * 60,
9      },
10    });
11  })
12  // Products - getServerSideProps
13  .get('/_next/data/:version/p/:productId.json', ({cache}) => {
14    cache({
15      // Allowing service worker (if present) to serve the cached responses from the browser itself
16      browser: {
17        maxAgeSeconds: 0,
18        serviceWorkerSeconds: 60 * 60 * 24,
19      },
20      edge: {
21        maxAgeSeconds: 60 * 60 * 24,
22        staleWhileRevalidateSeconds: 60 * 60,
23      },
24    });
25  })
26  .use(nextRoutes);

Preventing Next.js pages from being cached by other CDNs #

By default, Next.js adds a cache-control: private, no-cache, no-store, must-revalidate header to all responses from getServerSideProps. The presence of private would prevent Edgio from caching the response, so nextRoutes from @edgio/next automatically removes the private portion of the header to enable caching at the edge. If you want your responses to be private, you need to specify a cache-control header using the router:

1new Router().get('/my-private-page', ({setResponseHeader}) => {
2  setResponseHeader(
3    'cache-control',
4    'private, no-cache, no-store, must-revalidate'
5  );
6});

Doing so will prevent other CDNs running in front of Edgio from caching the response.

Using next-i18next #

The next-i18next package is a popular solution for adding localization to Next.js apps. It has some issues when running in serverless deployments, but you can work around these:

First, you need to not use the default name for the next-i18next.config.js file. We recommend renaming it i18next.config.js. When you use the default name, next-i18next will try to load the config when the serverless function starts and since it is not bundled with the app, it will fail.

Then, you need to explicitly provide the config to appWithTranslation and serverSideTranslations.

So in your pages/_app.js:

1export default appWithTranslation(MyApp, require('../i18next.config')); // <~ need to explicitly pass the config here

and in your pages:

1export async function getStaticProps({locale}) {
2  return {
3    props: {
4      ...(await serverSideTranslations(
5        locale,
6        ['common', 'footer'],
7        require('../i18next.config')
8      )), // <~ need to explicitly pass the config here.
9      // Will be passed to the page component as props
10    },
11  };
12}

Make sure you also import the config correctly with the new name into your next.config.js:

1const { withEdgio, withServiceWorker } = require('@edgio/next/config')
2const { i18n } = require('./i18next.config')
3
4module.exports = withEdgio(
5  withServiceWorker({
6    i18n,
7  }),
8)

Finally, you will need to update your edgio.config.js to includeFiles where the locale files are stored. Example using the default of /public:

1module.exports = {
2  connector: '@edgio/next',
3  includeFiles: {
4    public: true,
5  },
6};

A working example app can be found here.

Image optimizer #

By default, Next.js image optimizer is replaced by our image optimizer, which is available in all build modes. You can disable it and use the built-in Next.js image optimizer instead by adding disableImageOptimizer: true to the edgio.config.js file.

1module.exports = {
2  /* ... */
3  disableImageOptimizer: true,
4};

Serverless Bundling #

Next.js has continued to improve how it bundles production builds for deployment on serverless architectures. Edgio takes advantage of these improvementsby applying different configuration options depending on the version of Next.js being used:

For backwards compatibility, Edgio will also respect target: 'serverless' in your next.config.js for Next.js versions prior to 12.0.0.

Support for Next.js Middleware (BETA) #

Edgio supports Next.js middleware starting with Next.js 12.2.0.

When using Next.js middleware it should be noted that the middleware functions are only executed at the serverless layer, after the edge cache. Middleware that you want to execute on each request needs to have caching disabled explicitly for the route on which the middleware is enabled. Some Middleware use cases such as rewriting the request to another route would be fine to cache. These use cases need to be evaluated on a per route basis with caching enabled/disabled based on the desired result.

Runtime Variables Configuration #

Edgio supports runtime variables in serverRuntimeConfig and publicRuntimeConfig properties of next.config.js. For more information, visit the Next.js Runtime Configuration documentation.