Humid

Humid is a lightweight wrapper around mini_racer used to generate Server Side Rendered (SSR) pages from your js-bundling builds. While it was built for React, it can work with any JS function that returns a HTML string.

Caution

This project is in its early phases of development. Its interface, behavior, and name are likely to change drastically before a major version release.

Installation

Add Humid to your Gemfile.

gem 'humid'

For source-map support, also add

yarn add source-map-support

Configuration

Add an initializer to configure

Humid.configure do |config|
  # Path to your build file located in `app/assets/build/`. You should use a
  # separate build apart from your `application.js`.
  #
  # Required
  config.application_path = Rails.root.join('app', 'assets', 'build', 'server_rendering.js')

  # Path to your source map file
  #
  # Optional
  config.source_map_path = Rails.root.join('app', 'assets', 'build', 'server_rendering.js.map')

  # Raise errors if JS rendering failed. If false, the error will be
  # logged out to Rails log and Humid.render will return an empty string
  #
  # Defaults to true.
  config.raise_render_errors = Rails.env.development? || Rails.env.test?

  # The logger instance.
  # `console.log` and friends (`warn`, `error`) are delegated to
  # the respective logger levels on the ruby side.
  #
  # Defaults to `Logger.new(STDOUT)`
  config.logger = Rails.logger

  # Options passed to mini_racer.
  #
  # Defaults to empty `{}`.
  config.context_options = {
    timeout: 1000,
    ensure_gc_after_idle: 2000
  }
end

# Common development options
if Rails.env.development? || Rails.env.test?
  # Use single_threaded mode for Spring and other forked envs.
  MiniRacer::Platform.set_flags! :single_threaded
end

Then add to your config/puma.rb

workers ENV.fetch("WEB_CONCURRENCY") { 1 }

on_worker_boot do
  Humid.create_context
end

on_worker_shutdown do
  Humid.dispose
end

If you'd like support for source map support, you will need to

Add the following to your entry file, e.g, server_rendering.js.
set config.source_map_path.

require("source-map-support").install({
  retrieveSourceMap: filename => {
    return {
      url: filename,
      map: readSourceMap(filename)
    };
  }
});

A sample webpack.config is available for reference.

The mini_racer environment.

Functions not available

The following functions are not available in the mini_racer environment

setTimeout
clearTimeout
setInterval
clearInterval
setImmediate
clearImmediate

`console.log`

console.log and friends (info, error, warn) are delegated to the respective methods on the configured logger.

Usage

In your entry file, e.g, server_rendering.js, pass your HTML render function to setHumidRenderer. There is no need to require the function.

// Set a factory function that will create a new instance of our app
// for each request.
setHumidRenderer((json) => {
  const initialState = JSON.parse(json)

  return ReactDOMServer.renderToString(
    <Application initialPage={initialState}/>
  )
})

And finally call render from ERB.

<%= Humid.render(initial_state).html_safe %>

Instrumentation is included:

Completed 200 OK in 14ms (Views: 0.2ms | Humid SSR: 11.0ms | ActiveRecord: 2.7ms)

Puma

mini_racer is thread safe, but not fork safe. To use with web servers that employ forking, use Humid.create_context only on forked processes.

# Puma
on_worker_boot do
  Humid.create_context
end

on_worker_shutdown do
  Humid.dispose
end

Server-side libraries that detect node.js envs.

You may need webpacker to create aliases for server friendly libraries that can not detect the mini_racer environment. For example, in your webpack.config.js.

...
  resolve: {
    alias: {
      'html-dom-parser': path.resolve(__dirname, '../../node_modules/html-dom-parser/lib/html-to-dom-server')
    }
  }
...

Writing universal code

Vue has a resource on how to write universal code. Below are a few highlights that are important to keep in mind.

State

Humid uses a single context across multiple request. To avoid state pollution, we provide a factory function to setHumidRenderer that builds a new app instance on every call.

This provides better isolation, but as it is still a shared context, polluting global is still possible. Be careful of modifying global in your code.

Polyfills

Polyfills will fail when using in the mini_racer environment because of missing browser APIs. Account for this by moving the require to componentDidMount in your component.

componentDidMount() {
  const dialogPolyfill = require('dialog-polyfill').default
  dialogPolyfill.registerDialog(this.dialog.current)
  this.dialog.current.open = this.props.open
  this.dialog.current.showModal()
}

Contributing

Please see CONTRIBUTING.md.

License

About thoughtbot

This repo is maintained and funded by thoughtbot, inc. The names and logos for thoughtbot are trademarks of thoughtbot, inc.

We love open source software! See our other projects. We are available for hire.

thoughtbot/humid