Serverless applications are becoming increasingly popular among developers due to their scalability and cost-effectiveness. They allow you to build and deploy applications without worrying about managing the underlying infrastructure, which can be a major time saver.
One popular framework for building serverless applications is Next.js, which is built on top of React and allows you to easily create server-rendered React applications. Vercel is a cloud platform that provides a hosting solution for Next.js applications, making it easy to deploy and scale your app.
In this article, we’ll take a look at how to use Next.js and Vercel to build a serverless application.
Setting up a Next.js project
The first step in building a Next.js app is to set up a new project. You can do this using the create-next-app tool, which is included with the Next.js framework. To create a new project, run the following command in your terminal:
npx create-next-app my-app
This will create a new directory called my-app the basic structure of a Next.js app. You can then navigate to this directory and start building your app.
Creating pages and routing
Next.js uses the file system to define the routes for your app. To create a new page, simply create a new file in the pages directory. The name of the file will be the route for that page. For example, if you create a file called about.js in the pages directory, it will be available at the /about route.
You can use the Link component provided by Next.js to create links between pages. For example, to create a link to the /about page from the index page, you can use the following code:
import Link from 'next/link';
export default function Index() {
return (
<div>
<Link href=“/about”>
<a>About</a>
</Link>
</div>
);
}
Fetching data with the getStaticProps and getServerSideProps methods
Next.js provides two methods for fetching data: getStaticProps and getServerSideProps. Both methods allow you to fetch data and pass it to your page component as props.
getStaticProps is called at build time, which means it will only be called when the app is built or rebuilt. This is useful for data that doesn’t change frequently, as it allows you to build the app with the data already included.
getServerSideProps is called on each request to the server, which means it will be called every time the page is loaded. This is useful for data that changes frequently, as it allows you to fetch the latest data on each request.
To use getStaticProps or getServerSideProps, you’ll need to export them from your page component. For example:
export async function getStaticProps() {
const data = await fetchData();
return {
props: {
data,
},
};
}
Deploying to Vercel
Once you’ve built your Next.js app, you’ll need to deploy it to a hosting platform so it can be accessed by users. Vercel is a great choice for hosting Next.js apps, as
