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Angular Universal

This guide describes Angular Universal, a technology that runs your Angular application on the server.

A normal Angular application executes in the browser, rendering pages in the DOM in response to user actions.

Angular Universal generates static application pages on the server through a process called server-side rendering (SSR).

It can generate and serve those pages in response to requests from browsers. It can also pre-generate pages as HTML files that you serve later.

Universal's server-side rendering has several potential benefits:

Facilitate web crawlers (SEO).
Show content sooner.
Perform well on mobile and low power devices.

This guide describes a Universal sample application that launches quickly as a server-rendered page. Meanwhile, the browser downloads the full client version and switches to it automatically after the code loads.

Download the finished sample code, which runs in a node express server.

Almost any web server technology can serve a Universal app. See this advanced example written for ASP.NET Core.

The build setup described in this guide is experimental and subject to change.

Overview

This overview explains the benefits of a Universal application, how it works, and the limitations of server-side rendering. Then it describes the sample application that goes with this guide.

Subsequent sections describe a sample Universal application derived from the Tour of Heroes tutorial and explain how to build and run that app.

{@a why-do-it}

Why Universal

There are three main reasons to create a Universal version of your app.

Facilitate web crawlers (SEO)
Improve performance on mobile and low-powered devices
Show the first page quickly

{@a seo} {@a web-crawlers}

Facilitate web crawlers

Google, Bing, Facebook, twitter and other social media sites rely on web crawlers to index your application content and make that content searchable on the web.

These web crawlers may be unable to navigate and index your highly-interactive, Angular application as a human user could do.

Angular Universal can generate a static version of your app that is easy searchable, linkable, and navigable without JavaScript. It also makes a site preview available since each URL returns a fully-rendered page.

Enabling web crawlers is often referred to as Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

{@a no-javascript}

Performance on mobile and low performance devices

Some devices don't support JavaScript or execute JavaScript so poorly that the user experience is unacceptable. For these cases, you may require a server-rendered, no-JavaScript version of the app. This version, however limited, may be the only practical alternative for people who otherwise would not be able to use the app at all.

{@a startup-performance}

Show the first page quickly

Displaying the first page quickly can be critical for user engagement.

Captive users of a line-of-business app may have to wait. But a casual visitor will switch to a faster site if your app takes "too long" to show the first page.

While AOT compilation speeds up application start times, it may not be fast enough, especially on mobile devices with slow connections. 53% of mobile site visits are abandoned if pages take longer than 3 seconds to load. Your app needs to load quickly, to engage users before they decide to do something else.

With Angular Universal, you can generate landing pages for the app that look like the complete app. The pages are pure HTML, and can display even if JavaScript is disabled. The pages do not handle browser events, but they do support navigation through the site using routerLink.

Of course most Angular apps are highly interactive. The landing page looks real and is far more useful than a "loading" spinner. But it won't fool anyone for long.

In practice, you'll serve a static version of the landing page to hold the user's attention. At the same time, you'll load the full Angular app behind it in the manner explained below. The user perceives near-instant performance from the landing page and gets the full interactive experience after the full app loads.

Another tool called Preboot can record browser events such as user keystrokes during the transition and play them back in the full Angular app once it is loaded.

{@a how-does-it-work}

How it works

To make a Universal app, you install the platform-server package. The platform-server package has server implementations of the DOM, XMLHttpRequest, and other low-level features that do not rely on a browser.

You compile the client application with the platform-server module instead of the platform-browser module. and run the resulting Universal app on a web server.

The server (a Node Express server in this guide's example) passes client requests for application pages to Universal's renderModuleFactory function.

The renderModuleFactory function takes as inputs a template HTML page (usually index.html), an Angular module containing components, and a route that determines which components to display.

The route comes from the client's request to the server. Each request results in the appropriate view for the requested route.

The renderModuleFactory renders that view within the <app> tag of the template, creating a finished HTML page for the client.

Finally, the server returns the rendered page to the client.

{@a limitations}

Working around the browser APIs

Because a Universal platform-server app doesn't execute in the browser, you may have to work around some of the APIs and capabilities that you otherwise take for granted on the client.

You won't be able reference browser-only native objects such as window, document, navigator or location. If you don't need them on the server-rendered page, side-step them with conditional logic.

Alternatively, look for an injectable Angular abstraction over the object you need such as Location or Document; it may substitute adequately for the specific API that you're calling. If Angular doesn't provide it, you may be able to write your own abstraction that delegates to the browser API while in the browser and to a satisfactory alternative implementation while on the server.

Without mouse or keyboard events, a universal app can't rely on a user clicking a button to show a component. A universal app should determine what to render based solely on the incoming client request. This is a good argument for making the app routeable.

Http requests with relative URLs don't work. You should convert them to absolute URLs on the server which means you'll need to know the server origin. You can pass the server origin into your app with a provider "universal/*" as you'll see in the example below.

Because the user of a server-rendered page can't do much more than click links, you should swap in the real client app as quickly as possible for a proper interactive experience.

{@a the-example}

The example

The Tour of Heroes tutorial is the foundation for the Universal sample described in this guide.

The core application files are mostly untouched, with a few exceptions described below. You'll add more files to support building and serving with Universal.

In this example, Webpack tools compile and bundle the Universal version of the app with the AOT (Ahead-of-Time) compiler. A node/express web server turns client requests into the HTML pages rendered by Universal.

You will create:

a server-side app module, app.server.module.ts
a Universal app renderer, universal-engine.ts
an express web server to handle requests, server.ts
a TypeScript config file, tsconfig-universal.json
a Webpack config file, webpack.config.universal.js

When you're done, the folder structure will look like this:

src/ index.html app web page main.ts bootstrapper for client app style.css styles for the app systemjs.config.js SystemJS client configuration systemjs-angular-loader.js SystemJS add-in tsconfig.json TypeScript client configuration app/ ... application code dist/ server.js * AOT-compiled server bundle universal/ * folder for universal code app-server.module.ts * server-side application module server.ts * express web server universal-engine.ts * express template engine bs-config.json config file for lite server package.json npm configuration tsconfig-universal.json * TypeScript Universal configuration webpack.config.universal.js * Webpack Universal configuration

The files marked with * are new and not in the original tutorial sample. This guide covers them in the sections below.

{@a preparation}

Preparation

{@a install-the-tools}

Install the tools

To get started, install these Universal and Webpack packages.

@angular/compiler-cli - contains the AOT compiler
@angular/platform-server - Universal server-side components
webpack - Webpack JavaScript bundler
@ngtools/webpack - Webpack loader and plugin for bundling compiled applications
raw-loader - Webpack loader for text files
express - node web server
@types/express - TypeScript type definitions for express

Install them with the following commands:

npm install @angular/compiler-cli @angular/platform-server express --save npm install webpack @ngtools/webpack raw-loader @types/express --save-dev

Modify the client app

You'll have to modify the client application in a few small ways to enable server-side rendering and to facilitate the transition from the Universal app to the client app.

{@a transition}

Enable transition to the client app

A Universal app can act as a dynamic "splash screen" that shows a view of your app while the real client app loads behind it. This gives the appearance of a near-instant application.

Meanwhile, the browser downloads the client app scripts in background. Once loaded, Angular transitions from the static server-rendered page to the dynamically rendered views of the live client app.

To make this work, the template for server-side rendering contains the <script> tags necessary to load the JavaScript libraries and other assets for the full client app.

As is often the case, the unmodified client index.html acts as the template for server-side rendering.

But you do have to adjust the root AppModule.

Open file src/app/app.module.ts and find the BrowserModule import in the NgModule metadata. Replace that import with this one:

The appId can be any string. Keep it short.

Angular adds the appId to styles of the server-rendered pages, so that they can be identified and removed when the client app starts.

You can get runtime information about the current platform and the appId by injection.

{@a http-urls}

Absolute HTTP URLs

The tutorial's HeroService and HeroSearchService delegate to the Angular Http module to fetch application data. These services send requests to relative URLs such as api/heroes.

In a Universal app, Http URLs must be absolute (e.g., https://my-server.com/api/heroes) even when the Universal web server is capable of handling those requests.

You'll have to change the services to make requests with absolute URLs when running on the server and with relative URLs when running in the browser.

One solution is to provide the server's runtime origin under the Angular APP_BASE_REF token, inject it into the service, and prepend the origin to the request URL.

Start by changing the HeroService constructor to take a second origin parameter that is optionally injected via the APP_BASE_HREF token.

Note how the constructor prepends the origin (if it exists) to the heroesUrl.

You don't provide APP_BASE_HREF in the browser version, so the heroesUrl remains relative.

You can ignore APP_BASE_HREF in the browser if you've specified <base href="/"> in the index.html to satisfy the router's need for a base address, as the tutorial sample does.

You will provide the APP_BASE_HREF in the universal version of the app (see how below), so the heroesUrl becomes absolute.

Do the same thing to the HttpSearchService constructor. You'll have to tweak the http.get call in the search() method as well. Here's the revised class.

{@a build-client-app}

Try locally first

Open a terminal window and confirm that the client app still works in the browser.

npm start

When you are done, shut down the server with ctrl-C.

Revert the build

The rest of this page concentrates on the server-side universal app. An important teaching point below assumes that you did not compile the client-side app.

To maintain that useful fiction, delete the client-side compiled files.

rm src/main.js* && rm src/app/*.js*

{@a server-code}

Server code

To run an Angular Universal application, you need a server that accepts client requests and returns rendered pages. That's not part of the client-side Angular app, so you need to add the necessary pieces.

Create a universal/ folder as a sibling to the app/ folder.

Add to it the following three universal files:

The app server module
The Universal engine
The web server

{@a app-server-module}

App server module

The app server module class (conventionally named AppServerModule) is an Angular module that wraps the application's root module (AppModule) so that Universal can mediate between your application and the server. AppServerModule also tells Angular how to bootstrap your application when running as a Universal app.

Create an app-server.module.ts file in the src/universal directory with the following AppServerModule code:

Notice that it imports first the client app's AppModule and then Angular Universal's ServerModule.

This is also the place to register providers that are specific to running your app under Universal. But don't register APP_BASE_HREF here; register it in the universal engine instead.

{@a universal-engine}

Universal template engine

The Universal renderModuleFactory function turns a client's requests into server-rendered HTML pages. You'll call that function within a template engine that's appropriate for your server stack.

This guide's sample is written for Node Express so the engine takes the form of Express template engine middleware.

Create a universal-engine.ts file in the src/universal directory with the following code.

You can reuse this Universal template engine code in other applications. It knows nothing about the tutorial sample application.

{@a render-module-factory}

Rendering the page

The call to Universal's renderModuleFactory is where the rendering magic happens.

The first parameter is the AppServerModule that you wrote earlier. It's the bridge between the Universal server-side renderer and your application.

The second parameter is an options object

document is the template for the page to render (typically index.html).
url is the application route (e.g., /dashboard), extracted from the client's request. Universal should render the appropriate page for that route.
extraProviders are optional Angular dependency injection providers, applicable when running on this server

{@a provide-origin}

You supply extraProviders when your app needs information that can only be determined by the currently running server instance. The required information in this case is the running server's origin.

As discussed above, HTTP request URLs must be absolute. Our solution is to calculate the running server's origin (see getOrigin()) and provide it under the APP_BASE_HREF token.

Cached result

The renderModuleFactory function returns a promise that resolves to the rendered page. It's up to your engine to decide what to do with that page.

There are many alternatives. For example, the rendered output could be stored as static HTML files to be served later. This engine caches the rendered page in memory so that a given route is only rendered once.

That's potentially simplistic. Too many different requests could bloat server memory. Volatile data on the page will get stale and could potentially mislead the user. You might want to invalidate old cached pages periodically.

Most importantly, the promise callback returns the rendered page to the web server, which then forwards it to the client in the HTTP response.

{@a web-server}

Universal web server

A Universal web server responds to application page requests with static HTML rendered by the Universal template engine.

It's the same as any other web server in all other respects. It receives and responds to HTTP requests from clients (usually browsers). It serves static assets such as scripts, css, and images. It may respond to data requests, perhaps directly or as a proxy to a separate data server.

The sample web server for this guide is based on the popular Express framework.

Any web server technology can serve a Universal app as long as it can call Universal's renderModuleFactory.

For example, see this ASP.NET Core server

Even if you've chosen a different server technology, the principles and decision points discussed below will apply to you.

Create the server.ts file in the src/universal directory and add the following code:

This sample server is not secure! Be sure to add middleware to authenticate and authorize users just as you would for a normal Angular application server.

{@a import-app-server-module-factory}

Import AppServerModule factory

Most of this server code is re-usable across many applications. One line, the import of the AppServerModule, couples it specifically to a single application.

Your code editor may tell you that this import is incorrect. It refers to the source file for the AppServerModule factory which doesn't exist at design time.

That file will exist, briefly, during compilation. The build process creates it in the ../aot directory, bundles it with other universal/ code, and erases it during post-build cleanup. It's never around when you're editing server.ts.

All will be well as long as you arrange for the AOT compiler to generate this module factory file before it compiles this web server file. Learn how below.

Add the Universal template engine

Express supports template engines such as the Universal template engine you wrote earlier. You import that engine and register it with Express like this:

Filter request URLs

The web server must distinguish app page requests from other kinds of requests.

It's not as simple as intercepting a request to the root address /. The browser could ask for one of the application routes such as /dashboard, /heroes, or /detail:12. In fact, if the app were only rendered by the server, every app link clicked would arrive at the server as a navigation URL intended for the router.

Fortunately, application routes have something in common: their URLs lack file extensions.

Data requests also lack extensions but they're easy to recognize because they always begin with /api.

All static asset requests have a file extension (e.g., main.js or /node_modules/zone.js/dist/zone.js).

So we can easily recognize the three types of requests and handle them differently.

data request - request URL that begins /api
app navigation - request URL with no file extension
static asset - all other requests.

An Express server is a pipeline of middleware that filters and processes URL requests one after the other.

You configure the Express server pipeline with calls to server.get() like this one for data requests.

This sample server doesn't handle data requests.

The tutorial's "in-memory web api" module, a demo and development tool, intercepts all HTTP calls and simulates the behavior of a remote data server. In practice, you would remove that module and register your web api middleware on the server here.

Universal HTTP requests have different security requirements

HTTP requests issued from a browser app are not the same as when issued by the universal app on the server.

When a browser makes an HTTP request, the server can make assumptions about cookies, XSRF headers, etc.

For example, the browser automatically sends auth cookies for the current user. Angular Universal cannot forward these credentials to a separate data server. If your server handles HTTP requests, you'll have to add your own security plumbing.

The following code filters for request URLs with no extensions and treats them as navigation requests.

Serve static files safely

A single server.use() treats all other URLs as requests for static assets.

In this app, valid static assets are either in the node_modules folder or the src folder, a fact enforced by the root prefixed to the request URL. An attempt to download a file located anywhere else results in 404 - not found.

For security reasons, locate sensitive files outside of these two folders.

{@a universal-configuration}

Configure for Universal

The server application requires its own build configuration, independently from the configuration of the client-side version.

You'll create two configuration files, one for TypeScript and one for Webpack.

{@a typescript-configuration}

TypeScript configuration

Create a tsconfig.universal.json file in the project root directory to configure TypeScript compilation of the universal app.

You start with a copy of the client app's tsconfig.json and make the following changes.

Set the module property to es2015. The transpiled JavaScript will use import statements instead of require() calls.
Set the files property to compile the app-server.module before the universal-engine, for the reason explained above.
Add a new angularCompilerOptions section with the following settings:
- genDir - the temporary output directory for AOT compiled code.
- entryModule - the root module of the client application, expressed as path/to/file#ClassName.
- skipMetadataEmit - set true because you don't need metadata in the bundled application.

The resulting tsconfig.universal.json should look like this.

{@a webpack-configuration}

Webpack configuration

Create a webpack.config.universal.js file in the project root directory with the following code.

Webpack configuration is a rich topic beyond the scope of this guide. A few observations may clarify some of the choices.

Webpack walks the dependency graph from the two entry points to find all necessary universal application files.
The @ngtools/webpack loader loads and prepares the TypeScript files for compilation.
The AotPlugin runs the AOT compiler (ngc) over the prepared TypeScript, guided by the tsconfig-universal.json you created above.
The raw-loader loads CSS and HTML files as strings. You may need additional loaders or configuration for other file types.
The compiled output and other asset files are bundled into src/dist/server.js.

{@a build-and-serve-universal}

Build and run

Now that you've created the TypeScript and Webpack config files, you can build and run the Universal application.

First add the build and serve commands to the scripts section of the package.json:

"scripts": { "build:uni": "webpack --config webpack.config.universal.js", "serve:uni": "node src/dist/server.js", ... }

{@a build}

Build

From the command prompt, type

npm run build:uni

Webpack compiles and bundles the universal app into a single output file, src/dist/server.js, per the configuration above. It also generates a source map, src/dist/server.js.map that correlates the bundle code to the source code.

Source maps are primarily for the browser's dev tools, but on the server they help locate compilation errors in your components.

{@a serve}

Serve

After building the server bundle, start the server.

npm run serve:uni

The console window should say

listening on port 3200...

{@a universal-in-action}

Universal in action

Open a browser to http://localhost:3200/. You should see the familiar Tour of Heroes dashboard page.

Navigation via routerLinks works correctly. You can go from the Dashboard to the Heroes page and back. You can click on a hero on the Dashboard page to display its Details page.

But clicks, mouse-moves, and keyboard entries are inert.

Clicking a hero on the Heroes page does nothing.
You can't add or delete a hero.
The search box on the Dashboard page is ignored.
The back and save buttons on the Details page don't work.

User events other than routerLink clicks aren't supported. The user must wait for the full client app to arrive.

It will never arrive until you compile the client app, a step you'll take in just a moment.

If these features work, then you actually did build the client version of the app and it is executing in the browser.

You most likely built it earlier when you confirmed that the app still worked after changing the hero services.

While you will compile the client version soon, at the moment you want to see how the universal app behaves without the client version.

Pretend that you did not build the client version. Open a terminal window and delete the compiled files.

rm src/main.js* && rm src/app/*.js*

Now the app should still navigate but do nothing with button clicks.

Review the console log

Open the browser's development tools. In the console window you should see output like the following:

building: / /styles.css /node_modules/core-js/client/shim.min.js /node_modules/zone.js/dist/zone.js /node_modules/systemjs/dist/system.src.js /systemjs.config.js /main.js Error: ENOENT: no such file or directory, stat '... ./src/main.js' ...

The first line shows that the server received a request for '/' and passed it to the Universal engine, which then built the HTML page from your Angular application. The application re-routes / to /dashboard.

Refresh the browser and the first console line becomes building: /dashboard.

Refresh again. This time, the first line is from cache: /dashboard because your universal template engine found the previously rendered page for /dashboard in its cache.

The remaining console log lines report requests for static files coming from <link> and <script> tags in the index.html. The .js files in particular are needed to run the client version of the app in the browser. Once they're loaded, Angular should replace the Universal-rendered page with the full client app.

Except that it didn't!

Missing main.js error

Note the error at the bottom of the console log that complains about a missing main.js file.

Error: ENOENT: no such file or directory, stat '... ./src/main.js' ...

The full client app doesn't launch because main.js doesn't exist. And main.js doesn't exist because you have not yet built the client version of the app.

{@a client-transition}

Build the client app

Now build the client-side version of the app.

npm run build

This command builds the client app in a verbose, development mode.

Of course you’d build the production version with minimal size in mind, even if you didn’t use universal. Building for production is covered elsewhere in the documentation.

The compiler may fail with the following error:

error TS2307: Cannot find module '../../aot/src/universal/app-server.module.ngfactory'.

You need to exclude the server-side /universal folder files from client app compilation.

Open tsconfig.json, find the "exclude" node and add "universal/*" to the array. The result might look something like this:

  "exclude": [
    "node_modules/*",
    "universal/*"
  ]

Compile again with npm run build.

Refresh the browser. The Universal app is quickly replaced by the full client app. The console log fills with requests for more files.

Most importantly, the event-based features now work as expected.

When you make application changes, remember to rebuild both the universal and the client-side versions of the app.

{@a throttling}

Throttling

The transition from the server-rendered app to the client app happens quickly on a development machine. You can simulate a slower network to see the transition more clearly and better appreciate the launch-speed advantage of a universal app running on a low powered, poorly connected device.

Open the Chrome Dev Tools and go to the Network tab. Find the Network Throttling dropdown on the far right of the menu bar.

Try one of the "3G" speeds. The server-rendered app still launches quickly but the full client app takes many seconds to load.

{@a conclusion}

Conclusion

This guide showed you how to take an existing Angular application and make it into a Universal app that does server-side rendering. It also explained some of the key reasons for doing so.

Facilitate web crawlers (SEO)
Support low-bandwidth or low-power devices
Fast first page load

Angular Universal can greatly improve the perceived startup performance of your app. The slower the network, the more advantageous it becomes to have Universal display the first page to the user.

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