Vercel

We can deploy vite-plugin-ssr to Vercel simply by using a Vercel API Route, or we can use vite-plugin-vercel if we want advanced Vercel features such as ISR and Edge Middleware.

API Route

We can deploy our vite-plugin-ssr app to Vercel simply by creating a Vercel API Route api/ssr.js that server-side renders our app.

Example: github.com/brillout/vite-plugin-ssr_vercel.

⚠ Make sure to properly set OUTPUT DIRECTORY in your Vercel dashboard, see the example's readme.md instructions.

Using a Vercel API Route is a sturdy way to deploy to Vercel as API Routes is a core Vercel feature: it's here to stay and, most importantly, stable. (Whereas Vercel's Build Output API is a moving target with occasional breaking changes.) Once we setup our server-side rendering API Route, we can expect it to work for the foreseeable future.

vite-plugin-vercel

vite-plugin-vercel enables zero-configuration support for all Vercel features, including Incremental Static Regeneration (ISR) and Edge Middleware.

If we pre-render our pages only partially, we can also use vite-plugin-vercel to statically deploy our pre-rendered pages while dynamically serving our non-prerendered pages.

See vite-plugin-ssr + vite-plugin-vercel installation instructions at vite-plugin-vercel > Usage with vite-plugin-ssr.

Under the hood, vite-plugin-vercel uses Vercel's Build Output API.

Build Output API

For maximum flexibility and configuration options, we can also directly use the Build Output API.

Example: github.com/brillout/vite-plugin-ssr_vercel_build-output-api.

Data APIs (GraphQL, RESTful, RPC)

Vercel API Routes only work on Vercel's platform; we cannot run them locally.

This means that we need to integrate our data layer twice:

  1. Using Vercel's API Routes, for Vercel deployment.
  2. Using a local server (e.g. Express.js), for development.

This is usally easy to achieve as most data layer tools integrate using a single HTTP endpoint. For example:

  • GraphQL integrates over a single HTTP endpoint /graphql.
  • Telefunc integrates over a single HTTP endpoint /_telefunc.

In other words, we add a data layer by:

  • Creating a new Vercel API Route, integrating that single endpoint.
  • Creating a new route to our local development server (e.g. Express.js), integrating that single endpoint.

When using SSR, we recommend using RPC instead of GraphQL, which most of time leads to a drastic simplification and increased development speed.