Angular Universal – A Detailed Guide To Use It For Server-Side Rendering

Quick Summary:

Table of Contents

What is Angular Universal?

Angular Universal enables server-side rendering (SSR) in Angular applications. Typically, Angular apps are client-side, which means they rely on the browser to load and render the content. With Angular Universal, the initial HTML of the application is rendered on the server and sent to the client, enhancing performance and improving SEO, especially for content that needs to be accessible to search engine crawlers. In simple terms, Angular server side rendering allows generating a static version of your application that is easily searchable, linkable, and navigable without JavaScript.

Why Use Angular Universal?

Angular Universal is an excellent choice for creating performant, SEO-friendly, and accessible Angular applications. This will help improve performance, user experience, and search engine visibility. This is not it; there are a number of other reasons to use Angular Univeral, a few of which are given below.

• Better SEO: Angular Universal pre-renders HTML on the server, making it easier for search engines to crawl and index, which improves search visibility, especially for content-heavy sites.
• Faster Load Times: Server side rendering Angular lets users see pre-rendered content immediately, improving the initial load experience and reducing bounce rates.
• Enhanced User Experience: Faster load times and quick interactivity provide a smoother experience, particularly for users on low-end devices or slower connections.
• Improved Social Media Previews: SSR enables accurate meta tags, ensuring rich previews when links are shared on social media.
• Effective Caching and CDN Use: Pre-rendered content can be cached, delivering faster and lower server loads.

What is Server-Side Rendering?

Server-side rendering (SSR) refers to a rendering method where the server returns a fully compiled static HTML page with all necessary data to the client. Although SSR was widely used in the past, its usage declined with the introduction of client-side rendering. In SSR, the server compiles and delivers the complete HTML content to the client and repeats this process whenever a route change occurs. This approach relies on server-side scripts, written in a server-side language, to fetch and compile dynamic data before sending it to the client.

Advantages of Server-Side Rendering (SSR)

• Enhanced Performance on Slow Devices: With SSR, the server handles the heavy lifting of rendering, which can benefit users on slower devices, as less JavaScript processing is required on the client side.
• Better Social Sharing: SSR allows pages to load with all metadata (like open graph tags) in place, making it easier for social media platforms to generate accurate previews for shared links.
• Improved Client-Side JavaScript Management: By offloading initial rendering to the server, SSR can reduce the JavaScript bundle size sent to the client, speeding up client-side interactions.
• Dynamic Data Rendering: SSR allows applications to handle dynamic data more effectively for the first load, making it suitable for content that needs to be up-to-date when users land on the page, such as eCommerce product pages, dashboards, or news sites.

Steps to implement Server-Side Rendering (SSR) with Angular Universal

Server side rendering Angular Universal allows you to pre-render Angular applications on the server, providing a faster initial load and better SEO. Here’s a step-by-step guide to implementing SSR in your Angular app.

Step - 1 Angular Version Checking

Check the version of your angular CLI using this command

Upgrade to the latest version of Angular 18 using this command if your CLI version is less than v9.

Step - 2 Create an Angular Application

Create an Angular Application using this command.

Angular CLI will create a folder and install the required packages & dependencies.
Navigate and open the project

Step – 3 Run Angular Application

Open the terminal and enter the command to run your application on your local machine.

Right-click on the browser and click on “view page source.” The page source will be similar to the image below.

Here you can only see < app-root > < / app-root >, and no static HTML page is displayed because most of the data is loaded on the client side. By default, the application created with CLI is configured to have client-side rendering. With the help of Angular Universal, we can configure server-side rendering (SSR) smoothly.

Step – 4 Adding Angular SSR to our Application

To add SSR to your application, enter the following command.

The command will create a few files & will also update some existing files.
After executing the command, you will see something like this in your terminal.

You can see that 4 new files have been created, and 5 files have been updated. Let’s review the changes in the package.json file to view the newly added scripts and packages.

⦿ Scripts

⦿ Packages

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Step – 5 Result of SSR

To see the result of the SSR on a local machine, we will now need to run our application using this command.

The UI will remain the same, as we haven’t changed the HTML.

Right-click on the browser and click on “view page source.” Now, the page source will show our UI’s static HTML tags and styles, something like the image.

Conclusion

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

How does SSR improve SEO for Angular applications?

With SSR, the content of your Angular app is fully rendered on the server before being sent to the client. This pre-rendered HTML is easily readable by search engine bots, improving your site’s indexing and potentially boosting its SEO.

How do I set up Angular Universal in my existing Angular app?

You can set up Angular Universal using the Angular CLI by running ng add @nguniversal/express-engine. This command will configure the app with the necessary dependencies and set up a basic server to handle SSR.

Can Angular Universal be used for dynamic content?

Yes, Angular Universal can handle dynamic content by pre-rendering the initial HTML and loading additional data on the client side. However, SSR will only render the initial state, and any further changes will occur on the client side.

What are the limitations of Angular Universal?

Angular Universal can be complex to implement for highly interactive applications, as SSR only renders the initial state on the server. Furthermore, there may be challenges with third-party libraries that depend on the DOM, as they might not function correctly in a server environment.

What types of applications benefit the most from Angular Universal and SSR?

Applications that rely heavily on SEO need fast initial loading times, or have high traffic on low-end devices benefit the most from SSR with Angular Universal. E-commerce websites, content-heavy platforms, and news portals are typical examples.