Next.js Rewrites: Optimizing Your Routing

In web development, speed and efficiency play a key role. Routing is one such area which is important to focus, which enables users to navigate from one page to another. Outof many tools in Next js we have rewrites. In this article, we will discuss in details about rewrites in Next js, what actually they and why they are important to manage effectively to supercharge the application.

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What Are Next.js Rewrites?

Next.js rewrites are a feature that allows to customize and optimize the routing behavior in Next.js application. We can define rules that redirect the incoming requests to different paths or even the external URLs by deploying Next js rewrites.

It helps in providing a lot of flexibility to structure the application’s routes and making them easier to create user friendly URL’s. Rewrites also helps to load the resourced more efficiently.

 

Why Are Rewrites Important?

After getting to know about Rewrites, lets discuss why they are important and how they help in Nextjs application:

1. Improved SEO: As we know, search engines love clean and descriptive URLs and rewites help use to create SEO friendly paths for pages. In short it can improve search ranking as a result.
2. Enhanced User Experience: As URL’s become short and easy to remember, they help in improving overall user experience.
3. Resource Optimization: Rewrites can help to optimize the loading of resources. For example, we can redirect requests for certain assets to a Content Delivery Network (CDN) to reduce latency and improve page load times.
4. Restructuring Routes: If we decide to reorganize application’s routes or change the URL structure, rewrites allows us to do it without breaking existing links and bookmarks.

 

How to Use Rewrites in Next.js

You can follow these quick steps to implement rewrites in Next js:

Step 1 – Create Next Config File

Step 2 – Configure Rewrites

Step 3 – Testing Rewrites

Step 4 – Deploy Application

 

Step 1 – Create Next Config File

If you don’t already have a next.config.js file in your project, create one in the root directory.

 

Step 2 – Configure Rewrites

Now, in the next.config.js file, you can configure rewrites using the rewrites property in the module.exports object. This property should be an array of objects, where each object defines a rewrite rule as shown below:

// next.config.js
module.exports = {
  rewrites: [
    { source: '/old-page', destination: '/new-page' },
    { source: '/blog/:slug', destination: '/posts/:slug' },
    // Add more rewrite rules as needed
  ],
}

Here we have two rewrite rules. The first one redirects requests from /old-page to /new-page, while the second one allows for dynamic routing by capturing a :slug parameter and redirecting it to /posts/:slug.

 

Step 3 – Testing Rewrites

Make sure you test the rewrite rules to ensure they work as expected. We can test them easily by running the Next.js application and accessing the URLs we have configured.

 

Step 4 – Deploy Application

After testing is complete and we are satisfied, deploy the Next.js application to your hosting environment. Most of the hosting providers, like Vercel and Netlify, support Next.js rewrites very well.

 

How to Rewrites for Dynamic Routes/params in Next.js?

For providing the rewites for pages with dynamic routes with parameters, we can use the source and destination properties in your next.config.js file to create rewrite rules as usual as shown below:

// next.config.js
module.exports = {
  async rewrites() {
    return [
      { source: '/user/:id', destination: '/profile/:id' },
      // Add more rewrite rules as needed
    ]
  },
}

Here, the requests to /user/:id will be rewritten to /profile/:id, where :id is a dynamic parameter. Similary by keeping the parameter slugs as it, we can rewite the URLs.

 

How to Rewrite with Next.js i18n routing?

Next.js i18n routing can be combined with rewrites to create internationalized URLs. We can define rewrite rules that map different language paths to your i18n routes:

// next.config.js
module.exports = {
  async rewrites() {
    return [
      { source: '/en-us/:path*', destination: '/:path*' },
      { source: '/fr/:path*', destination: '/:path*' },
      // Add more rewrite rules for other languages
    ]
  },
}

Requests to URLs like /en-us/about and /fr/about will be rewritten to the i18n route /about.

 

How to Set up Custom Rewrites in Next.js for API routes or _middleware functions?

We can setup custom rewrites for API routes or _middleware functions in Next.js by specifying the source and destination paths in next.config.js file:

// next.config.js
module.exports = {
  async rewrites() {
    return [
      { source: '/api/:path*', destination: '/api-handler/:path*' },
      // Add more rewrite rules for API routes
    ]
  },
}

 

In above example, requests to /api/:path* will be rewritten to /api-handler/:path*. For _middleware functions, we can define rewrites similarly, ensuring that the source and destination paths match the routes in your middleware setup.

 

Conclusion

Next.js rewrites is a powerful tool that can help to optimize the web application’s routing, improve SEO, and optimize the user experience. We can implement Rewrites by defining rules in next.config.js file very easily as we discussed in details above. Hope this will be helpful.