Next and Express Together
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Blue horntail woodwasp posted this in #help-forum
Blue horntail woodwaspOP
Hey folks! So I am working on an app for Lichess, which uses Next.js and which I plan to use Express.js alongside it for. As this app is going to also use CORS to pull data from Lichess to use for D3.js statistics charts, the app is probably going to get a LOT of traffic. Maybe tens of thousands of users per day.
I heard that Next.js does not feature a complete backend. Is Next.js backend going to be enough to handle several thousand or even millions of users per day? Or will Express help me out quite a bit? Does integrating Express make a Next.js app harder to scale? Are there any other variables that I'm missing? Please let me know asap.
I heard that Next.js does not feature a complete backend. Is Next.js backend going to be enough to handle several thousand or even millions of users per day? Or will Express help me out quite a bit? Does integrating Express make a Next.js app harder to scale? Are there any other variables that I'm missing? Please let me know asap.
5 Replies
Blue horntail woodwaspOP
I'm using these articles as a reference: https://www.codewalnut.com/learn/using-express-with-next-js
https://www.ghazikhan.in/blog/nextjs-replace-backend-pros-cons
https://www.ghazikhan.in/blog/nextjs-replace-backend-pros-cons
Blue horntail woodwaspOP
By the way I plan to host on Azure, not Vercel
Transvaal lion
I wouldn't worry about performance until you actually reach that level of traffic in production. Nextjs can easily handle a lot of traffic.
I'd say you don't need Express, unless you have a valid reason to use it (e.g. hosting a websocket server which won't work with serverless environments. Or long running tasks which can be expensive in serverless).
I'd say you don't need Express, unless you have a valid reason to use it (e.g. hosting a websocket server which won't work with serverless environments. Or long running tasks which can be expensive in serverless).
@Transvaal lion I wouldn't worry about performance until you actually reach that level of traffic in production. Nextjs can easily handle a lot of traffic.
I'd say you don't need Express, unless you have a valid reason to use it (e.g. hosting a websocket server which won't work with serverless environments. Or long running tasks which can be expensive in serverless).
Blue horntail woodwaspOP
Thanks a bunch! Is switching from Nextjs's backend to Express easy to do later on?
Transvaal lion
I imagine it would be a bit tedious, depending on how many API routes your app will have. You'd have to create new Express endpoints manually. However, you can probably copy paste the actual business logic. It depends...