Hosting SPA pre-render

[alexbruno]

[READ] Step 1: Are you in the right place?

Issues filed here should be about a feature request for a specific extension in this repository. To file a feature request that affects multiple extensions or the Firebase Extensions platform, please reach out to
Firebase support directly.

• Ok. I came here through a link sent to me from support by email.

[REQUIRED] Step 2: Extension name

This feature request is for extension: spa-pre-render (storage-resize-images, firestore-send-email, etc)

• I want to suggest a new extension to add a feature I think Firebase does not have yet.

What feature would you like to see?

It would be great to have a pre-render extension for SPA deployed in Firebase Hosting.
I have been deployed SPA in other static hosting services where there are pre-render features. Theorically, website performance and SEO would be a little better.
Here is an example from Netlify hosting dashboard:

How would you use it?

I could use it to deploy SPA websites using frontend frameworks, with slicky UX, good SEO and performance.

[russellwheatley]

Thanks for the extension idea! This sounds pretty interesting. Could you elaborate on how you would see this working step by step?

[alexbruno]

Hello, good question!
In fact, I can't say precisely, because it probably evolves some engeenering which I don't know.
But, maybe it works like...

• Each deploy triggers a pre-render process, which takes necessary time to do the job
• That job includes a kind of crawler robot to access and navigate through website page links
• So, after reading pages content, it could get a complete static HTML version of each page
• Then, caching this content version, maybe on Hosting or Storage
• And finally, routes web requests (not from browser) to that cached version

I think it is something like that.

[russellwheatley]

Hey @alexbruno, that sounds like a good idea for an extension. Here is an SO thread on what you're describing that has some implementation ideas.

[alexbruno]

Thanks @russellwheatley !
It looks like a good thread to test alternatives.
I will test something like that and back here with a feedback.
Even so, think about it! A generic extension with presets for most used frontend frameworks like Angular, Vue, React.
Maybe I will contribute with it, if I can...

[i14h]

@mbleigh @bkendall your thoughts?

[mbleigh]

Prerendering is an interesting use case, but I'm not sure we can offer something super-useful as an extension without adding some new capabilities to Firebase Hosting. It's something we can think more about, and we can leave this open to see if it gets 👍 over time 😄