Due to its flexibility, performance, and wide community, React.js development services have become one of the most popular frameworks for web application development. However, developers face a choice between client and server rendering when choosing an approach to development with React.js. This article will examine the pros and cons of using React.js and server rendering for application development.
Advantages of server rendering:
Celadonsoft created a list of the following server rendering benefits:
- Improved performance: Server rendering allows you to pre-generate HTML content on the server and send it to the client, which reduces page load time and improves application performance.
- SEO Optimization: Search engines like Google understand and index content generated on a server better than content generated dynamically on the client side using JavaScript. This increases the visibility of your app in search results and helps attract more organic traffic.
- Social Networking Support: Server rendering makes your app more accessible to social networks such as Facebook and Twitter, which use scraping mechanisms to extract page information. Pre-generated HTML content allows social media to display previews of pages and images correctly when posting links to your app.
- Best User Experience at First Download: Users can quickly see the page’s contents and start interacting with the application. HTML content is displayed immediately after the page is loaded, even if JavaScript has not yet been loaded and executed.
- Easy to scale: Server rendering makes your application more scalable, as pre-generated HTML content can be cached on the server or distributed via the Content Delivery Network (CDN), reducing the burden on your infrastructure.
- Improved Security: Because the server rendering is performed on the server, it can reduce vulnerability to certain types of attacks, such as XSS (cross-site scripting) attacks, because JavaScript code is executed on the server rather than on the client.
Disadvantages of server rendering:
In any case, server rendering has its own disadvantages:
- Configuration Complexity: Configuring server rendering can be complex and requires extra time and effort compared to client rendering.
- Increased server load: Server rendering can increase server load, especially when working with many requests or high load.
- Development and Debugging Challenges: Developing server-based rendering applications can be more challenging and require more effort to debug as you have to consider both the client and server parts of the application.
Conclusion:
Server rendering provides several significant benefits, such as improved performance, SEO, and user experience. However, it also has drawbacks, including the difficulty of setting up and increasing the load on the server. When choosing the approach to development with React.js and server rendering, you should weigh the pros and cons and take into account your project’s requirements and the level of your technical skills.