[Remix](https://remix.run) is a full-stack web framework that lets you focus on the user interface and work back through web fundamentals to deliver a fast, slick, and resilient user experience. This is what excited me when I first read about Remix. I'm a big advocate for progressively enhancing web applications and this framework seems to take this approach by simply using web fundamentals.

This is not a step-by-step guide on how to make a web application with Remix, but rather some features I noticed and wanted to highlight. That might come later. If you are looking for that, [Remix.run](http://Remix.run) is an amazing landing page and contains very well written documentation that will take you through all the reasons why they build this framework, what it offers and how it works. Seriously, one of the best landing pages I've seen in the past few years. Please, have a read there and come back for my view as a [Next.js](https://nextjs.org/) fanboy.
## Routing mechanism
Like Next.js, Remix uses a file-based routing system. In `/app` (where your app will live) you can create a folder called `routes`. Every file you add (e.g. `/app/routes/example` will create a route and page under `http://website.com/example`. If you're unfamiliar with this concept, please read my article [A simple, yet detailed introduction to Next.js](https://www.davebitter.com/articles/a-simple-yet-detailled-introduction-to-next-js). Next.js and Remix work nearly the same with some exceptions like creating a dynamic page (`[slug]` vs. `$slug`. If this is not the way you want to work, you can also define your routes in an object for both of these frameworks.
### Nested routes
Remix seems to heavily rely on the usage of nested routes as "partials". Let's say you are building an admin view. You might have multiple routes for several admin pages:
```
- app
    - routes
        - admin.tsx
        - admin
            - new.tsx
            - edit.tsx
                $user.tsx

```
All these admin pages might share a special navigation bar for logged in admins. Naturally, you could load a reusable component in the markup of all these pages, but that sounds more like a partial that you used to use back when building websites with templating languages like Pug or Handlebars. Remix allows you to just load the partial in `app/routes/admin.tsx` and add a Remix component called `<Outlet />` . This component serves as a placeholder where a child route can be rendered. In this case, that would be the new and edit route. I really like this approach of templating out pages.
### Scoped JS and CSS per nested route
These nested routes are not just useful as partials, but will allow Remix to also easily chunck-up your nested routes for JS and CSS bundles. Naturally, it knows what pieces to load as you load them per nested route. This makes these nested routes true small little routes and optimises the loading of resources.

This concept is fundamental to how Remix works. You can read more about nested routes [here](https://remix.run/docs/en/v1/guides/routing) and CSS scoping with `<Links />` [here](https://remix.run/docs/en/v1/guides/styling).
## Server- and client-side code
We've seen great strides by Next.js to make it easy for developers to expose server-side functions right next to client-side code. You can read more about that in my article [Next.js page generation](https://www.davebitter.com/articles/next-js-page-generation). At a first glance, Remix has an evenly convenient, if not better solution. I feel like Remix takes it to the next level by fully focussing on not having to use client-side JS as a standard, but rather an afterthought.
### Loaders
Many web applications need to fetch data. You can use `loader` functions in combination with a `useLoaderData` hook to set this up.
```jsx
import type { LoaderFunction } from "remix";
import type { User } from "@prisma/client";
import { db } from "~/utils/db.server";

type LoaderData = { users: Array<User> };
export let loader: LoaderFunction = async () => {
  const data: LoaderData = {
    users: await db.user.findMany()
  };

  return { data };
};

export default function Users() {
  const data = useLoaderData<LoaderData>();

  return (
    <ul>
      {data.map(user => (
        <li>{user.name}</li>
      ))}
    </ul>
  );
}
```
There is quite some Typescript-specific code here, but in its essence there is an async function exported called `loader`. This function fetches some data and returns an object with data. Note that you can return multiple pieces of data from various sources here. You can now access all this data using the `useLoaderData` hook. An important aspect of this is that no client-side JS is needed here. You just want some data from your server-side function and then use it to render a list on the server to serve to the client.
### Actions
So what about handling things like forms? I need to handle that on the client right? Well, not necessarily. Forms can easily be handled with a `method` attribute on the form element. Sure, you might want to make a fancy multi-step form, but this is where progressive enhancement pops up again. Just make a form with a `method` and let it post using the web standards. You then export an `action` function that will handle the posting of the form. Take a look at this code snippet of the [Jokes app tutorial](https://remix.run/docs/en/v1/tutorials/jokes) I followed in preparation for this article. You can find my full end result in [this repository](https://github.com/DaveBitter/remix-jokes).
```jsx
import type { ActionFunction } from "remix";
import { redirect } from "remix";
import { db } from "~/utils/db.server";

export const action: ActionFunction = async ({
  request
}) => {
  const form = await request.formData();
  const name = form.get("name");
  const content = form.get("content");
  // we do this type check to be extra sure and to make TypeScript happy
  // we'll explore validation next!
  if (
    typeof name !== "string" ||
    typeof content !== "string"
  ) {
    throw new Error(`Form not submitted correctly.`);
  }


  const fields = { name, content };


  const joke = await db.joke.create({ data: fields });
  return redirect(`/jokes/${joke.id}`);
};

export default function NewJokeRoute() {
  return (
    <div>
      <p>Add your own hilarious joke</p>
      <form method="post">
        <div>
          <label>
            Name: <input type="text" name="name" />
          </label>
        </div>
        <div>
          <label>
            Content: <textarea name="content" />
          </label>
        </div>
        <div>
          <button type="submit" className="button">
            Add
          </button>
        </div>
      </form>
    </div>
  );
}
```
There is a basic form (with no client-side JS) that just posts on submit. The `action` function is then called where we can then get the form data and handle it like normal. But what about validation? Naturally, you want to do this on the server, but it's considered good practice to do this on the client as well. The nice thing about having everything in this file is that we can reuse the same validation function in both places. Here's another snippet with just server-side validation implemented.
```jsx
import type { ActionFunction, LoaderFunction } from "remix";
import {
    useActionData,
    redirect,
    Form
} from "remix";
import { JokeDisplay } from "~/components/joke";
import { db } from "~/utils/db.server";
import {
    requireUserId,
    getUserId
} from "~/utils/session.server";

export const loader: LoaderFunction = async ({
    request
}) => {
    const userId = await getUserId(request);
    if (!userId) {
        throw new Response("Unauthorized", { status: 401 });
    }
    return {};
};

function validateJokeContent(content: string) {
    if (content.length < 10) {
        return `That joke is too short`;
    }
}

function validateJokeName(name: string) {
    if (name.length < 2) {
        return `That joke's name is too short`;
    }
}

type ActionData = {
    formError?: string;
    fieldErrors?: {
        name: string | undefined;
        content: string | undefined;
    };
    fields?: {
        name: string;
        content: string;
    };
};

export const action: ActionFunction = async ({
    request
}): Promise<Response | ActionData> => {
    const userId = await requireUserId(request);
    const form = await request.formData();
    const name = form.get("name");
    const content = form.get("content");
    if (
        typeof name !== "string" ||
        typeof content !== "string"
    ) {
        return { formError: `Form not submitted correctly.` };
    }


    const fieldErrors = {
        name: validateJokeName(name),
        content: validateJokeContent(content)
    };
    const fields = { name, content };
    if (Object.values(fieldErrors).some(Boolean)) {
        return { fieldErrors, fields };
    }


    const joke = await db.joke.create({
        data: { ...fields, jokesterId: userId }
    });
    return redirect(`/jokes/${joke.id}`);
};

export default function NewJokeRoute() {
    const actionData = useActionData<
        ActionData | undefined
    >();


    return (
        <div>
            <p>Add your own hilarious joke</p>
            <Form method="post">
                <div>
                    <label>
                        Name:{" "}
                        <input
                            type="text"
                            defaultValue={actionData?.fields?.name}
                            name="name"
                            aria-invalid={
                                Boolean(actionData?.fieldErrors?.name) ||
                                undefined
                            }
                            aria-describedby={
                                actionData?.fieldErrors?.name
                                    ? "name-error"
                                    : undefined
                            }
                        />
                    </label>
                    {actionData?.fieldErrors?.name ? (
                        <p
                            className="form-validation-error"
                            role="alert"
                            id="name-error"
                        >
                            {actionData.fieldErrors.name}
                        </p>
                    ) : null}
                </div>
                <div>
                    <label>
                        Content:{" "}
                        <textarea
                            defaultValue={actionData?.fields?.content}
                            name="content"
                            aria-invalid={
                                Boolean(actionData?.fieldErrors?.content) ||
                                undefined
                            }
                            aria-describedby={
                                actionData?.fieldErrors?.content
                                    ? "content-error"
                                    : undefined
                            }
                        />
                    </label>
                    {actionData?.fieldErrors?.content ? (
                        <p
                            className="form-validation-error"
                            role="alert"
                            id="content-error"
                        >
                            {actionData.fieldErrors.content}
                        </p>
                    ) : null}
                </div>
                <div>
                    <button type="submit" className="button">
                        Add
                    </button>
                </div>
            </Form>
        </div>
    );
}
```
Note that we return the validation messages if there is something wrong and render the page again accessing them with the `useActionData` hook. If the form validates fine, we can redirect to the overview page.
> This is a great example of how easy it can be to create an interactive part of your web application without the need for client-side JS for something that has web standards. Sure you can, but Remix is built in a way where you take this approach first.

## Resource routes
If I would've build the previous form without any client-side JS in Next.js, I would've had to build a Next.js API route. These are incredibly powerful. You can read more about these API routes in my article [Next.js API routes](https://www.davebitter.com/articles/next-js-api-routes). With Remix, you can do exactly the same, but even more. Remix doesn't just offer this for, for instance, JSON responses, but for any kind of response really. You can create a file with a special naming pattern like `/app/routes/jokes[.]rss.tsx`. The `[.]rss` part tells Remix that you will return a `.rss` file. In this code snippet, you can see how something like this could work.
```jsx
import type { LoaderFunction } from "remix";
import { db } from "~/utils/db.server";

export const loader: LoaderFunction = async ({
    request
}) => {
    const jokes = await db.joke.findMany({
        take: 100,
        orderBy: { createdAt: "desc" },
        include: { jokester: { select: { username: true } } }
    });


    const host =
        request.headers.get("X-Forwarded-Host") ??
        request.headers.get("host");
    if (!host) {
        throw new Error("Could not determine domain URL.");
    }
    const protocol = host.includes("localhost")
        ? "http"
        : "https";
    const domain = `${protocol}://${host}`;
    const jokesUrl = `${domain}/jokes`;


    const rssString = `
    <rss xmlns:blogChannel="${jokesUrl}" version="2.0">
      <channel>
        <title>Remix Jokes</title>
        <link>${jokesUrl}</link>
        <description>Some funny jokes</description>
        <language>en-us</language>
        <generator>Kody the Koala</generator>
        <ttl>40</ttl>
        ${jokes
            .map(joke =>
                `
            <item>
              <title>${joke.name}</title>
              <description>A funny joke called ${joke.name}</description>
              <author>${joke.jokester.username}</author>
              <pubDate>${joke.createdAt}</pubDate>
              <link>${jokesUrl}/${joke.id}</link>
              <guid>${jokesUrl}/${joke.id}</guid>
            </item>
          `.trim()
            )
            .join("\n")}
      </channel>
    </rss>
  `.trim();


    return new Response(rssString, {
        headers: {
            "Cache-Control": `public, max-age=${60 * 10
                }, s-maxage=${60 * 60 * 24}`,
            "Content-Type": "application/xml",
            "Content-Length": String(Buffer.byteLength(rssString))
        }
    });
};
```
How cool is that! The routes folder is not just for HTML pages, but you can create routes for any resource you need, hence the name resource routes.
## Nested route utility exports
I found the utility exports that Remix offers on nested routes incredibly nice to use. Previously, I mentioned you could import CSS on nested routes and have it scoped and chuncked to just that nested route. There are a variety of other Remix utilities you can use scoped to a nested route.
### SEO
You probably want to add some meta-tags to your pages. You can do this easily by exporting a `MetaFunction` on (nested) routes. Let's say you have some basic meta-tags on the root of the pages under `app/root.tsx`. You can export that function there like so:
```jsx export const meta: MetaFunction = () => {

  const description = `Learn Remix and laugh at the same time!`;
  return {
    description,
    keywords: "Remix,jokes",
    "twitter:image": "https://remix-jokes.lol/social.png",
    "twitter:card": "summary_large_image",
    "twitter:creator": "@remix_run",
    "twitter:site": "@remix_run",
    "twitter:title": "Remix Jokes",
    "twitter:description": description
  };
};
```
But you might want to update the title or description for a specific nested route. You guessed it, you can export the same function with different values there to extend this base set of meta tags. I think that's pretty sweet.
### Error handling
You can export a `CatchBoundary` and `ErrorBoundary` function for every (nested) route.
```jsx
export function CatchBoundary() {
    const caught = useCatch();


    if (caught.status === 404) {
        return (
            <div className="error-container">
                There are no jokes to display.
            </div>
        );
    }
    throw new Error(
        `Unexpected caught response with status: ${caught.status}`
    );
}

export function ErrorBoundary() {
    return (
        <div className="error-container">
            I did a whoopsies.
        </div>
    );
}
```
This will help you with two things. You can notify the user with some custom message on the page, but more importantly, you can isolate this error to just the nested route. The rest of you're application will run fine. This helps you think about how you want to handle your not so optimal flow.
## Finally, loading some client-side JS for the first time
During the Jokes app tutorial, I didn't even realize that hadn't written any client-side JS yet. I think it's really cool that Remix doesn't load any client-side JS by default. Naturally, you might need some client-side JS so you can load the `<Scripts />` component. This is the first time you will see JS files in your network tab. These optimised and chuncked files will be loaded and "hydrate" your application on the client.
## Verdict.
I'm a big advocate of Progressive Enhancement to make web applications simple, accessible and resilient. You can read some of my articles on this [here](https://www.davebitter.com/tags/progressive-enhancement). I usually put this to practice for just components. Seeing Remix take this approach to the entire application gives me hope for a future of building great web applications using web standards and progressive enhancement.

For the first time in years, I felt like a "web developer" again instead of a JS engineer. It's incredible fun to start thinking about how to leverage these standards smartly. I'm very excited about what Remix will offer and will definitely continue researching Remix and sharing it with all of you. Thanks for reading!

First look at Remix

Back in 2018, Mirabeau updated their main website [mirabeau.nl](https://mirabeau.nl). However, the old blogging platform became the sibling that was left behind. The branding and visual style got severely updated and as you might know, the world of (front-end) development moves at a rapid pace. Projects that are about five years old become outdated both in tooling and functionality. I want to rethink the way we build web platforms and construct a stack that stays up-to-date and is resilient for the coming years.

![The old blog](//images.ctfassets.net/w4dg3cjf42ew/5vXCgxn6BTCy8jqrjMiLXf/2db1ca51a38df55e69951346ab28abbc/49D97C22-25AD-4F85-862D-E6C93A006EE6-min.png)*Our aged blog platform*

## The new blog platform
The biggest difference between [the new blog platform](blog.mirabeau.nl) – compared to the old – is the unified visual language. I took, in close collaboration with the visual designers, elements of the main Mirabeau website to use in the platform. Examples are the page scroll effect and the blog cards. Combining that with the corporate identity ensures a unified look & feel.
The second major improvement is the overall ease of use. For example, you are now able to scan more quickly over the page to find an article of your interest. I implemented this by proving a teaser image and a summary of the blog. This gives authors more room to make a scannable summary of their post.

![The new Mirabeau visual branding](//images.ctfassets.net/w4dg3cjf42ew/36VJWDKG568fiDIAdv9Gpg/39118b835a3f11b5d59c8bcde0ee8d66/B323160D-6A46-4AD2-A48C-1FEF85BBF506-min.png)*The updated branding and visual language*

### Solving issues with Single Page Applications (SPA)
Every once in awhile I see techniques or frameworks that truly excite me. The foundation of this platform is built on one of those. The platform is built in [React.js](https://reactjs.org/) with the full power of [Next.js](https://nextjs.org/).
At Mirabeau, there are two main ways of building the front-end for a website. They either use their [front-end boilerplate](https://github.com/mirabeau-nl/frontend-boilerplate) for setting up a component library/design system and static websites or they use React.js to build more interactive heavy web applications. React.js comes with a few big downsides that you need to take into account. The reason Next.js excites me so much is that it solves many of the issues.
The biggest drawback is the lack of server-side rendering (SSR) capabilities when using React.js or any other SPA. In short, you load a blank page and a JavaScript bundle. After loading the bundle, the page is built in the browser and the user can use the application.
This has multiple implications like:
* 1.  __Performance__: The page needs to load a - in most cases large - JavaScript bundle to be able to render the first view. Often, you then need to get some data - like a blog post - from a server. This then gets retrieved and rendered on the page. By utilising SSR, we can do all of this just on the server.
* 2.  __Providing SEO__: SEO is an important factor for many types of websites like the Mirabeau blog platform. Firstly, I wanted to provide robots/crawlers from Google to properly index our pages. Secondly, I wanted social media platforms to be able to create links with images, titles and summaries.
* 3.  __Building through progressive enhancement__: At Mirabeau, they build websites through progressive enhancement. Unfortunately, you need JavaScript for a React.js website. We can use SSR to provide the platform without having JavaScript in the browser.

![React.js and Next.js](//images.ctfassets.net/w4dg3cjf42ew/5JdNrYGW2SBKmIoT38kqz0/80b019ca3d6e00871b3603f842814b0c/CDFEF415-123A-4D0E-85AD-BB3B32A0B3A1-min.png)*React.js and Next.js working together*

### Serverless architecture
Next.js provides a couple of ways to run your platform. You can run your platform with a [Node.js server](https://blog.logrocket.com/how-to-build-a-server-rendered-react-app-with-next-express-d5a389e7ab2f/), generated as a  [static site (SSG)](https://nextjs.org/learn/excel/static-html-export)or [ serverless](https://serverless.com/blog/serverless-nextjs/). I decided to go with the latter for a few reasons. As the content might update frequently, a statically generated website requires rebuilds of pages when their content changes. This leaves me with Node.js and serverless. Serverless is the right choice with regards to costs, scalability and speed. More details later on in this story.
### Increasing engagement with custom SEO
SEO is an important aspect of any website, but even more for a blog platform. I dove into how I could leverage this for this platform.
* 1.  __Creating dynamic tags__. Fortunately, Next.js provides a Head component to let you dynamically add nodes, like tags for SEO, to the head of the page. I use this to load page-specific tags dynamically per page.
* 2.  __Using standards with [Open Graph](https://ogp.me/)__. It’s a protocol that is widely supported by all major social media websites and crawlers. I use Open Graph to create semantical tags for SEO. For example, I was able to provide a title, image and summary for an article page.
* 3.  __Custom tags for social sites__. By default robots or crawlers of websites like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter will try to get this information out of your website. I want to allow authors to have full control over this. In the CMS the author can give a specific image and summary for their article. This then dictates how it looks like when shared on social media sites. This gives more fine-grained control over this.
* 4.  __Extending tags in a smart way__. Even though I want to give this fine-grained control to the others, I don't want them to worry about it. I wrote a small algorithm that takes a set of base tags for the entire blog platform and extends them based on the type of page. This ensures good SEO while taking away the work for authors.
### Utilising a serverless architecture
I want to dive a bit deeper in the serverless architecture that is used for this blog platform. This is the biggest difference, technology-wise next to React.js, compared to the old platform.

![The Serverless Framework with Next.js](//images.ctfassets.net/w4dg3cjf42ew/6m51INzwmzmJr4Z25pfInu/52550162034fa24e94687be53e931e2c/serverless_nextjs_blog_header-min.png)*The Serverless Framework with Next.js*

* 1.   __‘Zero’ configuration__. Configuring and deploying a fully serverless architecture can become quite difficult. For this reason, I decide to make use of the [Serverless Framework](https://serverless.com/). This allows me to get up and running relatively quickly. It simplified the configuration and deployment aspect.
* 2.  __Next.js__. I use the [Serverless Next.js plugin](https://serverless.com/blog/serverless-nextjs/). This plugin takes the rest of the heavy lifting. It is exactly tailored to deploying a Next.js project with serverless and lambdas.
* 3.  __Cloud services__. I decided to use AWS, where we host many services, to deploy the serverless platform on. Below you can see the architecture that I use.

![New Mirabeau blog platform architecture on AWS](//images.ctfassets.net/w4dg3cjf42ew/1C35P7AAsdhPyE87h90fEi/269e6dc99c0c03cc79adbed078f7e240/serverless_nextjs_lambda_edge_aws_architecture-min.png)*The new Mirabeau blog platform architecture running on AWS*

### Cloud Services
A comprehensive overview of AWS services used for the new platform:
* 1.  __CloudFront__. Amazon CloudFront speeds up the distribution of static and dynamic web content to users. Making use of S3 buckets for static files and Lambda at edge to render the requested page server-side.

* 2.  __S3__. Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) is storage designed to make web-scale computing easier for developers. It is utilised to serve the images, CSS and JavaScript.
* 3.  __Lambda@Edge__ lets you run Node.js and Python Lambda functions to customize content that CloudFront delivers by executing the functions in AWS locations near the user. This results in a faster page load, in general, for every user all over the world.

![Lamda](//images.ctfassets.net/w4dg3cjf42ew/7uRaMDjuA7iS9kjLEau6Bm/48ef2eb84b38b9fc1314b427a523713d/cloudfront-events-that-trigger-lambda-functions-min.png)*A typical request going through AWS CloudFront*

### CI/CD with pipelines
Finally, I added CI/CD through pipelines. I do this for a few reasons. I want to ensure that all front-end developers can collaborate on this platform by quickly cloning the repository, make changes and roll out an update through the pipelines. Next to that, I want to ensure that everybody that I allow through the repository rights and access configuration, can deploy without creating their own AWS accounts and keys. This all ensures a nice developer experience.

![CI/CD](//images.ctfassets.net/w4dg3cjf42ew/KZlhxIeJqB8y7l954ixcm/04acb40e87638f9dbfed747370ba32aa/diagram-cicd-horizontal-85f50f218b3ff47fd993ab5529b85f0147901b20f18b972fdc48504e4bc3110e-min.png)*Two ways of CI/CD*

## The new front-end toolbox
Let’s take a step back and look at what a front-end developer in 2020 can do. It is a great time for front-end developers to experiment with different areas of the process of building a platform. With Next.js I was able to, relatively easy, add SSR through Lamdas. With the Serverless framework and the Serverless Next.js plugin, I was able to configure and deploy the full architecture to AWS. Finally, with pipelines I was able to implement CI/CD.

Naturally, there are more tools out there, but this platform attests to the fact that we become increasingly more powerful as front-end developers nowadays. We can build great things with the assistance of the mentioned tools. We can, once again, focus on creating!

Implementing the latest web technologies to boost the Mirabeau blog

I am a Developer Advocate & Senior Front-end Developer/Consultant. Here, you can find my resume, a collection of my articles covering a wide range of topics and get in contact.

Serverless

We all know how you can add an OG image to your website. But did you know it is quite easy to generate custom, freshly designed and stateful images which make you stand out from the crowd? You might have seen this before. GitHub leverages this to create awesome images which show general info about your PR's. Curious, like me, how they did this? In this talk I will leverage the power of Next.js serverless function to generate these images on the fly!

Dynamically generate Open Graph images using Next.js serverless

Going for React.js can introduce quite a few new challenges like server-side render support, performance, SEO and more. In this talk, I go over how I solve those challenges by using Next.js, "The React Framework for Production".

Serverless

Articles

First look at Remix

Implementing the latest web technologies to boost the Mirabeau blog

Talks

Dynamically generate Open Graph images using Next.js serverless

How I leveraged Next.js to solve my issues with React.js

Dynamically generate Open Graph images using Next.js serverless

How I leveraged Next.js to solve my issues with React.js

Dynamically generate Open Graph images using Next.js serverless

How I leveraged Next.js to solve my issues with React.js