# Running Next.JS and React /inside/ of ActionHero

This server will render dynamic next.js/react pages on some routes, and normal ActionHero API requests on others.  
This configuration works with both Next and ActionHero hot reloading of code.

A more detailed example showcasing how to use fetch and web sockets to interact with your API can be found here: https://github.com/actionhero/next-in-actionhero

## How to use

### Using `create-next-app`

Execute [`create-next-app`](https://github.com/segmentio/create-next-app) with [Yarn](https://yarnpkg.com/lang/en/docs/cli/create/) or [npx](https://github.com/zkat/npx#readme) to bootstrap the example:

```bash
npx create-next-app --example custom-server-actionhero custom-server-actionhero-app
# or
yarn create next-app --example custom-server-actionhero custom-server-actionhero-app
```

### Download manually

Download the example:

```bash
curl https://codeload.github.com/zeit/next.js/tar.gz/canary | tar -xz --strip=2 next.js-canary/examples/custom-server-actionhero
cd custom-server-actionhero
```

Install it and run:

```bash
npm install
npm run start
# or
yarn
yarn start
```

## How does this work?

1. Create an initializer to load next.js and create a handler that can extract the normal node `req` and `res` from the connection

```js
// initializers/next.js

const {Initializer, api} = require('actionhero')
const next = require('next')

module.exports = class NextInitializer extends Initializer {
  constructor () {
    super()
    this.name = 'next'
  }

  async initialize () {
    api.next = {
      render: async (connection) => {
        if (connection.type !== 'web') { throw new Error('Connections for NEXT apps must be of type "web"') }
        const req = connection.rawConnection.req
        const res = connection.rawConnection.res
        return api.next.handle(req, res)
      }
    }

    api.next.dev = (api.env === 'development')
    if (api.next.dev) { api.log('Running next in development mode...') }

    api.next.app = next({dev: api.next.dev})
    api.next.handle = api.next.app.getRequestHandler()
    await api.next.app.prepare()
  }

  async stop () {
    await api.next.app.close()
  }
}
```

2.  Create an action which will run the above `api.next.render(connection)`.  Note that we will not be relying on ActionHero to respond to the client's request in this case, and leave that up to next (via: `data.toRender = false`)

```js
// actions/next.js

const {Action, api} = require('actionhero')

module.exports = class CreateChatRoom extends Action {
  constructor () {
    super()
    this.name = 'render'
    this.description = 'I render the next.js react website'
  }

  async run (data) {
    data.toRender = false
    return api.next.render(data.connection)
  }
}

```

3. Tell ActionHero to use the api rather than the file server as the top-level route in `api.config.servers.web.rootEndpointType = 'api'`.  This will allows "/" to listen to API requests.  Also update `api.config.general.paths.public = [ path.join(__dirname, '/../static') ]`.  In this configuration, the next 'static' renderer will take priority over the ActionHero 'public file' api.  Note that any static assets (CSS, fonts, etc) will need to be in "./static" rather than "./public".

Note that this is where the websocket server, if you enable it, will place the `ActionheroWebsocketClient` libraray.  

4.  Configure a wild-card route at the lowest priority of your GET handler to catch all web requests that aren't caught by other actions:

```js
// config/routes.js

exports['default'] = {
  routes: (api) => {
    return {
      get: [
        { path: '/time', action: 'time' },

        { path: '/', matchTrailingPathParts: true, action: 'render' }
      ]
    }
  }
}
```