use Spatie\Ssr\Renderer;
use Spatie\Ssr\Engines\V8;
use Spatie\Ssr\Resolvers\DefaultResolver;
$engine = new V8();
$resolver = new DefaultResolver(__DIR__.'../../public/js');
$renderer = new Renderer($engine, $resolver);
echo $renderer->render('app');
// <div>My server rendered app!</div>- Works with any JavaScript framework that allows for server side rendering
- Runs with or without the V8Js PHP extension
- Requires minimal configuration
If you're building a Laravel app, check out the laravel-ssr package instead.
Server side rendering (SSR) can be hard, and non-trivial to enable in your JavaScript application. Before using this library, make sure you know what you're getting in to. Alex Grigoryan has a pretty concise article on the benefits and caveats of SSR.
In case you're in need of a refresher...
- SSR is useful if you need to tailor your app for crawlers that can't execute JavaScript (SEO)
- SSR reduces the time until the first meaningful paint
- SSR increases response times, and the overall load on your server
- SSR adds a meaningful amount of complexity to your application
If you've got an answor to the "Do I need SSR?" question, ask yourself if you need SSR in a PHP application. Benefits of rendering your app in a PHP runtime are:
- You can make use of your applications session & state
- Reduced infrastructure complexity because you don't need to maintain a node server
If you're building a SPA that connects to an external API, and the PHP runtime doesn't provide any extra value, you're probably better off using a battle tested solution like Next.js or Nuxt.js.
As a final disclaimer, judging by the amount—well, lack—of people blogging about rendering JavaScript applications in PHP, this whole setup is uncharted territory. There might be more unknown caveats lurking around the corner.
If you're still sure you want to keep going, please continue!
You can install the package via composer:
composer require spatie/server-side-renderingThis guide assumes you already know how to build a server-rendered application. If you're looking for reading material on the subject, Vue.js has a very comprehensive guide on SSR. It's Vue-specific, but the concepts also translate to other frameworks like React.
Before getting started, lets review this library's core concepts.
If you want to render your JavaScript app, you'll need to call the render method on the Renderer class. Renderer has two dependencies: a Resolver and an Engine, which will respectively fetch the necessary server & client scripts, and execute the server script.
When server side rendering a JavaScript app, your app will have two entry points: one for the server, which generates static html for the first paint, and one for the client, which bootstraps the application in the browser.
The Resolver interface needs to be able to do two things, both based on the same $entry string.
- Return the server script contents
- Return a client script url
A directory structure for a project that allows SSR commonly often looks similar to this:
app/
...
public/
js/
app-client.js
app-server.js
The DefaultResolver has a root path, and looks for files in that directory.
use Spatie\Ssr\Resolvers\DefaultResolver;
// Set the root path to an absolute path containing your scripts
$resolver = new DefaultResolver(__DIR__.'/../../public/js');
$resolver->getClientScriptUrl('app'); // 'js/app-client.js'
$resolver->getServerScript('app'); // <app-server.js contents>The client script url is needed on the webpage, and the server script will be executed by an Engine instance.
An engine executes a JS script on the server. This library ships with two engines: a V8 engine which wraps some V8Js calls, so you'll need to install a PHP extension for this one, and a Node engine which builds a node script at runtime and executes it in a new process. An engine can run a script, or an array of multiple scripts.
The V8 engine is a lightweight wrapper around the V8Js class. You'll need to install the v8js extension to use this engine.
The Node engine writes a temporary file with the necessary scripts to render your app, and executes it in a node.js process. You'll need to have node.js installed to use this engine.
composer testPlease see CHANGELOG for more information what has changed recently.
Please see CONTRIBUTING for details.
If you discover any security related issues, please email [email protected] instead of using the issue tracker.
You're free to use this package, but if it makes it to your production environment we highly appreciate you sending us a postcard from your hometown, mentioning which of our package(s) you are using.
Our address is: Spatie, Samberstraat 69D, 2060 Antwerp, Belgium.
We publish all received postcards on our company website.
Spatie is a webdesign agency based in Antwerp, Belgium. You'll find an overview of all our open source projects on our website.
Does your business depend on our contributions? Reach out and support us on Patreon. All pledges will be dedicated to allocating workforce on maintenance and new awesome stuff.
The MIT License (MIT). Please see License File for more information.