NuxtJs generate for dynamic websites?

Question

I'm creating a simple demo app with NuxtJs. The homepage shows static content that is not changed very often. There is another route for showing a list of users: /users. And one for showing user's details: /user/id.

Now my question is what's the difference between nuxt generate and nuxt build? which one should I use?

I think nuxt generate page will not render dynamic routes like users and user/id, Am I right? If I am right, then generate command will generate a pre-rendered HTML for homepage only. So using generate is always better than using build right ?

Answer 1

In universal mode, nuxt generate is for static site generation. nuxt build is for SSR site.

In 2.13.0, Nuxt introduced a target: static feature, make sure to check it.

A static site has the best performance, and it is easy to deploy on nginx or other services, like Netlify.

By default, nuxt generate only render your static home page and /users page, not the dynamic /user/:id route.

But you can config nuxt to help you generate the dynamic routes.

1. If you have a fixed set of users, you can use functions to generate the routes.

2. If the users data is constantly in change, you can config nuxt to fallback to SPA on the dynamic routes. But you can't get any benefit for SEO on the dynamic routes.

For SPA fallback, in the generate config, define a custom page for SPA fallback:

export default {
  generate: {
    fallback: "custom_sap_fallbackpage.html"
  }
}

Config the fallback page for unknow route in your deployment, for example, in Nginx:

location / {
    try_files $uri /custom_sap_fallbackpage.html;
}

nuxt build will build you a SSR site. The html is rendered on the server and sent to the client. It add some work load on the server and maybe is not that easy to deploy, but the main gain is the SEO. And to some users with low end devices or slow internet connection, maybe your site will perform better than depolying in SPA mode.

Basically, you need to consider:

1. The website's content is static or constantly changing?

nuxt generate for static. nuxt generate or nuxt build or spa mode for sites with dynamic routes.

2. Do you need SEO?

SPA wouldn't get any SEO.

3. How you deploy the site?

For static hosting service, only nuxt generate or spa mode will work.

4. your website is heavy with js code, and you want best performance for user with slow internet and slow devices. Or SEO is important for your site with a lot of dynamic content.

SSR is for you, use nuxt build.

Answer 2

There are three different deployment and generation options in Nuxt.

Universal Mode

---

In this mode you build your project and then you ship it to a node.js server, the first view is always rendered dynamically on the server and then turns into SPA, and works in the client. That's great for SEO, and for consuming API's but you cannot upload it to any hosting, for example on a shared VPS.

So - Node.js Host is required here.

SPA

---

Well basically how Vue.js works by default, virtually no SEO at all, you can upload it on a shared VPS hosting, because it's just an index.html and build.js file and it's working entirely on the client-side (in the browser).

We can go for a static hosting here.

Static App

---

This is where Nuxt.js shines, because this mode will generate an index.html file and the corresponding js/css assets for each route you have in the dist folder, and you can then just take those numerous files, and upload them to any hosting, you don't need a server here, because your first views are already pre-rendered, unlike Universal where the node server should pre-render the first view. So you get SSR here, and your main concert as far as I understand is if you get SPA too, and that's the best part as in Universal mode, after the first request the app continues in SPA mode, how great is that eh?

Anyways there are some things you should take into consideration, that if you want to generate index.html for dynamic content you need to make something that's kinda a mood killer. You need to add this to nuxt-config.js

generate: {
    routes: () => {
      return [
        '/posts/1'
      ]
    }    
  }

You can also use axios to make http request and return array here. Or even export default array from a file and include it here, where you combine all your dynamic routes. It's a one time job, but if you add new crud in your backend, that would add up 1 more request to run on executing nuxt generate that should be described in nuxt-config.

So that's the reason I would prefer to pay more for a server, but to host a Universal App, instead static generated, because that's the part that doesn't make it really great for consuming API's in my personal opinion, but it is a great future anyways.