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Next.js app with server side rendering and Phoenix API

This is a skeleton of a Phoenix application, which uses Next.js for rendering the frontend and phoenix for implementing the API. The app uses server side rendering out of the box and can be deployed on heroku with several very simple steps.

Creating a new project

To create a new project, run the following command:

bash <(curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/valo/phoenix_with_nextjs/master/install.sh) <PROJECT_NAME>

Replace <PROJECT_NAME> with the name of your project. The script will create a folder with the same name for your project.

To start the app:

  • Go in the folder of the app cd <PROJECT_NAME>
  • Install dependencies with mix deps.get
  • Install JS dependencies with cd app && yarn && cd ..
  • Update your Postgres setup in config/dev.exs
  • Create and migrate your database with mix ecto.setup
  • Start Phoenix endpoint with mix phx.server

Now you can visit localhost:3000 from your browser. Keep in mind that this is the address on which the node.js server is running. Using this URL ensures that the hot module reloading will work properly.

This setup is going to start 2 processes:

  • A Phoenix server, which is routing the traffic and responding to API requests
  • A node server, which is doing the server side rendering

Structure of the app

All the JS code is in app/. The API code is in lib/ and follows the phoenix 1.3 directory structure. You can find more info on how the JS side works on Learning Next.js. You can read more about how to define the API endpoints from the Phoenix docs or from the excellent Thoughtbot JSON API guide

Integration tests

It is possible to write high level integration tests for the JS app using the Hound integration testing framework. See the integration test in test/integration/home_test.exs for an example of that. It is possible to setup the DB and click around the app using a headless chrome browser. In order to run the tests you need chromedriver installed. You can install the driver with:

$ brew install chromedriver

you can run the default tests with

$ mix test

This mix task is going to automatically run the chromedriver and the node server, which are needed to run the tests.

Deploying on Heroku

You can deploy the app very easily to heroku following these steps:

  1. Clone the app with git clone https://github.com/valo/phoenix_with_nextjs.git
  2. Go into the phoenix_with_nextjs folder cd phoenix_with_nextjs
  3. Make sure you have installed and configured the heroku cli
  4. Create a heroku app with the needed buildpacks and a Postgres addon:
heroku create --buildpack "https://github.com/HashNuke/heroku-buildpack-elixir.git" --addons heroku-postgresql
heroku buildpacks:add https://github.com/gjaldon/heroku-buildpack-phoenix-static.git
  1. Take a note of the URL of the new app and set the URL in the WEBSITE_URL variable
heroku config:add WEBSITE_URL=<url_of_the_new_app>
  1. Deploy the app with git push heroku

If you want to be really efficient and have gzip compression and HTTP/2, use a CDN service like cloudflare in front of your app.

Why?

This application template includes the following features out of the box without the need of any configuration:

  • Phoenix API for defining business logic and exposing data
  • NextJS for writing the frontend using React-based components and routing
  • Server side rendering (SSR) of the frontend app out of the box
  • Integration testing framework, which allows to test the frontend app using headless chrome
  • Very easy deployment to Heroku and to any other hosting service, including features likes SSR