Splitting the Client and the Server into Separate Applications

[jaybytez]

Newbie question. We normally have separate development teams that build the client-side layer from the server-side integrations into CMS, etc. In other frameworks, I could see them wanting the client-side team to utilize a SSG to build those assets and then the other team would utilize Express/Node to build APIs like those that interact with the CMS.

In Next.js, is that possible to separate out a server-only layer in one project/deployment that runs APIs and provides integration into a CMS...while another project (targeted for client) builds the actual pages and leverages (SSG and/or SSR)?

Does doing this effect things like incremental builds and/or preview mode and SSR?

I assume if you had a Next.js API layer project and then an instance of Next.js project for only building SSG, then you would lose benefits of SSR. So you would really have to have a Next.js server to be that API layer and then a separate Next.js server to build the SSG and to handle SSR for the client-side resources that aren't generated.

Hope I am making sense, and if not, sorry...I come from a Java server-side background.

[timneutkens]

There's a lot of companies that don't build their API in Next.js but instead have a separate backend. getStaticProps/getServerSideProps allow you to fetch data from anywhere so you could indeed have this separation and just fetch the backend from your frontend powered by Next.js