Sådan oprettes en dynamisk Rick og Morty Wiki-webapp med Next.js
Opbygning af webapps med dynamiske API'er og serversidesætning er en måde at give folk en god oplevelse både med indhold og hastighed. Hvordan kan vi bruge Next.js til nemt at opbygge disse apps?
- Hvad skal vi bygge?
- Hvad er Next.js?
- Trin 0: Opsætning af en ny Next.js-app
- Trin 1: Henter Rick og Morty-tegn med en API i Next.js
- Trin 2: Visning af Rick og Morty-tegn på siden
- Trin 3: Indlæser flere Rick og Morty-figurer
- Trin 4: Tilføjelse af muligheden for at søge efter Rick og Morty-tegn
- Trin 5: Brug af dynamiske ruter til at linke til Rick og Morty tegnsider
- Bonustrin: Distribuer din Rick og Morty wiki til Vercel!
Hvad skal vi bygge?
Vi skal have det sjovt og opbygge en webapp, der fungerer som en grundlæggende wiki for Rick og Morty-figurer.

Vores app vil bestå af et par ting:
- En liste med tegn på forsiden
- En knap, der kan indlæse flere tegn, da API'et er pagineret
- Et søgefelt til at slå tegn op
- En tegnside med grundlæggende detaljer
Vi lærer nogle begreber som:
- Sådan spinder du en webapp op med Next.js
- Sådan hentes og bruges data fra en API
- Sådan gengives data fra en API på forhånd
- Sådan oprettes dynamisk routing
Hvad er Next.js?
Next.js er en React-ramme fra Vercel. Det giver dig mulighed for nemt at opbygge lette dynamiske webapps med masser af moderne funktioner, du forventer uden for kassen.
Vercel, firmaet, der understøtter Next.js, er en tjeneste, der giver dig mulighed for at automatisere kontinuerlige udviklingsrørledninger for nemt at implementere webapps til verden. Vi bruger også Vercels kommandolinjeværktøj til valgfrit at implementere vores nye wiki-demo.
Trin 0: Opsætning af en ny Next.js-app
Lad os starte vores Next.js-projekt for at komme i gang. Vi bruger npm eller garn til at komme i gang:
yarn create next-app # or npx create-next-app

Når du har kørt denne kommando, vil den stille dig et par spørgsmål. Jeg kalder på mit projekt my-rick-and-morty-wiki
, men du kan navngive det, hvad du vil.
Derefter bliver du spurgt, hvilken skabelon du skal vælge - fortsæt og vælg standardskabelonen.
Endelig installerer det alle afhængigheder.

Når den er færdig, kan du navigere til den nye mappe og køre:
yarn dev # or npm run dev

Du skal nu have en lokal server kørende på // localhost: 3000!

Trin 1: Henter Rick og Morty-tegn med en API i Next.js
Nu hvor vi har oprettet vores app, er den første ting, vi har brug for for at opbygge vores wiki, en liste med tegn.
For at gøre dette skal vi starte på vores startside i pages/index.js
.
Next.js stilladser automatisk denne side for os. Det er den første side, som nogen rammer på vores websted og har nogle grundlæggende funktioner i standardskabelonen som en titel, et simpelt gitter og nogle stilarter.
I øjeblikket anmoder denne side ikke om nogen data. For at få vores karakterer vil vi springe lige ind i at anmode om denne serverside.
For at gøre dette tillader Next.js os at eksportere en async- getServerSideProps
funktion lige ved siden af vores side, som den vil bruge til at injicere vores side med alle data, vi henter.
Lad os starte med at tilføje følgende uddrag over vores Home
funktionskomponent:
const defaultEndpoint = `//rickandmortyapi.com/api/character/`; export async function getServerSideProps() { const res = await fetch(defaultEndpoint) const data = await res.json(); return { props: { data } } }
Her er hvad vi laver:
- Vi indstiller en variabel kaldet,
defaultEndpoint
der simpelthen definerer vores standard API-slutpunkt - Vi definerer vores
getServerSideProps
funktion, som vi bruger til at hente vores data - I denne funktion bruger vi først
fetch
API'en til at stille en anmodning til vores slutpunkt - Med svaret kører vi
json
metoden, så vi kan få fat i output i JSON-format - Endelig returnerer vi et objekt, hvor vi gør vores
data
tilgængelige som en rekvisit iprops
ejendommen
Nu hvor vi fremsætter denne anmodning, skal vi gøre den tilgængelig til brug.
Vores data
stilles til rådighed som en prop, så lad os oprette et argument i vores Home
komponentfunktion for at få fat i det:
export default function Home({ data }) {
For at teste dette kan vi bruge console.log
til at se resultaterne:
export default function Home({ data }) { console.log('data', data);
Og når vi har gemt og genindlæst siden, kan vi nu se vores resultater!

Følg med på forpligtelsen!
Trin 2: Visning af Rick og Morty-tegn på siden
Nu hvor vi har vores karakterdata, lad os faktisk vise dem på vores side.
To start, I’m going to make a few tweaks. I’m going to update:
- The
title to “Wubba Lubba Dub Dub!”
- The
description to “Rick and Morty Character Wiki”
I’m also going to update the contents of
to:
My Character
What I’m doing here:
I’m making the
a list as that will be better for accessibility
I’m making the
of the
- And just changing the
to “My Character” temporarily
the
card
To make sure our new
-
doesn’t mess up the layout with it’s default styles, let’s also add the following to the bottom of the
.grid
CSS rules:list-style: none; margin-left: 0; padding-left: 0;
And now if we look at the page, we should see our basic changes.
Next, let’s make our grid load our characters.
At the top of our
Home
component function, let’s add:const { results = [] } = data;
That will destructure our results array from our data object.
Next, let’s update our grid code:
-
{results.map(result => { const { id, name } = result; return (
{ name }
) })}
Here’s what we’re doing:
- We’re using the
map
method to create a new list element for each of our results (or characters) - Inside of that, we’re grabbing the
id
andname
from each character result - We’re using the ID as a
key
for our list element to make React happy - We’re updating our header with the
name
And once you save and reload the page, we should now see a new list of our characters from the API!
We can also add an image for each character.
First, inside of our grid, let’s update our destructure statement to grab the image URL:
const { id, name, image } = result;
Next, let’s add the image above our header:
And now each of our characters also shows their picture!
Follow along with the commit!
Step 3: Loading more Rick and Morty characters
Now if you notice, when we load the page, we only get a certain number of results. By default, the API won’t return the entire list of characters, which makes sense, because it’s really long!
Instead, it uses pagination and provides us with the “next” endpoint, or the next page of results, that will allow us to load in more results.
To start, we’re going to use React’s
useState
hook to store our results in state. We’ll then have the ability to update that state with more results.First, let’s import
useState
from React:import { useState } from 'react';
Next, let’s create our state by first renaming our original
results
variable and setting up ouruseState
instance:const { results: defaultResults = [] } = data; const [results, updateResults] = useState(defaultResults);
If you save that and reload the page, you shouldn’t notice anything different yet.
Next, we want to be able to understand in our application what our current endpoint we’ve made a request is, what the next endpoint is, what the previous endpoint is, and how we can update all of that.
To do this, we’re going to create more state. First, we want to update our destructuring statement with our
data
to get theinfo
value:const { info, results: defaultResults = [] } = data;
Next, let’s set up some state using that:
const [page, updatePage] = useState({ ...info, current: defaultEndpoint });
Here, we’re:
- Creating a new
page
state that we can use to get ourprev
andnext
values - We’re also creating a new value called
current
we’ll we start off by using ourdefaultEndpoint
, which was the request made on the server
The idea here, is when we want to load more results, we’re going set up code to watch the value of
current
and update that value with thenext
, so when it changes, we’ll make a new request.To do that, let’s add a
useEffect
hook to make that request:const { current } = page; useEffect(() => { if ( current === defaultEndpoint ) return; async function request() { const res = await fetch(current) const nextData = await res.json(); updatePage({ current, ...nextData.info }); if ( !nextData.info?.prev ) { updateResults(nextData.results); return; } updateResults(prev => { return [ ...prev, ...nextData.results ] }); } request(); }, [current]);
Here’s what’s going on:
- First, we’re destructuring the
current
value from `page - We’re creating a
useEffect
hook that usescurrent
as a dependency. If they value changes, the hook will run - If our
current
value is the same asdefaultEndpoint
, we don’t run the code, as we already have our request data. Prevents and extra on load request - We create an async function that we’re able to run. This allows us to use
async/await
inside of ouruseEffect
hook - We make the request to the
current
endpoint. With that successful request, we update thepage
state with the newinfo
like the newprev
andnext
value - If our request does not have a previous value, that means it’s the first set of results for the given request, so we should completely replace our results to start from scratch
- If we do have a previous value, concatenate our new results to the old, as that means we just requested the next page of results
Again, if you save and reload the page, this still shouldn’t do anything and your page should be where it was before.
Finally, we’re going to create a Load More button and use it to update the
current
value to fire off a new request when we want a new page.To do that, let’s first add a new button below our grid:
Load More
Now we want something to happen when we click that button, so first add an event handler:
Load More
Then above the component return statement, let’s add that function:
function handleLoadMore() { updatePage(prev => { return { ...prev, current: page?.next } }); }
When triggered with our button click, this function will update our
page
state with a newcurrent
value, specifically with thenext
value which is the endpoint to fetch our next page of results.And when we save and reload the page, it does just that!
Follow along with the commit!
Step 4: Adding the ability to search for Rick and Morty characters
One of the features out Rick and Morty API provides is the ability to filter results — so basically the ability to search. So let’s add that as a feature.
First, we need a search form. Let’s add the following snippet under the description paragraph:
Search
Next, let’s add these styles to the bottom of the first
block:
.search input { margin-right: .5em; } @media (max-width: 600px) { .search input { margin-right: 0; margin-bottom: .5em; } .search input, .search button { width: 100%; } }
That’s going to give some spacing to our search input and button as well as make it mobile friendly. Feel free to add more styles if you’d like.
And if we save and refresh our page, we have a simple form.
It doesn’t do anything yet, so let’s make it search when submit the form.
To start, let’s add an
onSubmit
attribute to our form:And to go with that, let’s define our submit function above our return statement:
function handleOnSubmitSearch(e) { e.preventDefault(); const { currentTarget = {} } = e; const fields = Array.from(currentTarget?.elements); const fieldQuery = fields.find(field => field.name === 'query'); const value = fieldQuery.value || ''; const endpoint = `//rickandmortyapi.com/api/character/?name=${value}`; updatePage({ current: endpoint }); }
Here’s what we’re doing:
- First we’re preventing default behavior from the form submission to prevent the page from reloading
- Next we grab the current target, which is our form
- We grab the fields from the form by using the elements property. We also turn this into an array so it’s easy to work with
- We search those fields for our query input
- We grab the value of that input
- We create a new endpoint where we filter by name using that query value
- Finally, we update our
current
property in our page state to trigger a new request to that endpoint
And once you save that and reload the page, you can now give search a try. You should be able to type in a name like “rick”, hit enter or click the search button, and you should now see filtered results with the various ricks across the universe!
Follow along with the commit!
Step 5: Using dynamic routes to link to Rick and Morty character pages
Now that we have all of our characters, we want to be able to click into those characters and display some additional details. To do that, we’re going to make use of Next.js’s dynamic routes.
The first thing we need to do is properly configure our directory structure so Next.js recognizes the dynamic path. In order to set up a dynamic route, we need to create our folder exactly like:
- pages -- character --- [id] -- index.js
Yes, that means you’re literally creating a folder with the name of
[id]
, that’s not meant to be replaced. Next.js recognizes that pattern and will let us use that to create a dynamic route.To make creating the page easier, we’re going to simply duplicate our homepage by copying our
pages/index.js
file into our next directly.So we should now have a new page at
pages/character/[id]/index.js
.Next, let’s remove a bunch of stuff so we can get to a good starting point:
- Remove everything above the
return
statement in our page’s function component - Rename the function component Character
- Remove the
useState
anduseEffect
imports - Remove the description, search form, grid, and load more button
- Optional: remove the footer
Once you’re done, the top of our page’s function component should look like:
export default function Character({ data }) { return ( Create Next App
Wubba Lubba Dub Dub!
While there is some CSS we don’t need, we’re going to leave it all there for this demo. Feel free to clean some of that out later.
If you navigate manually to /character/1, you should now see a simple page with just a title:
Next, let’s update the data we’re fetching. We can reuse most of the code in our
getServerSideProps
function.We’re going to add a new argument to that
getServerSideProps
function:export async function getServerSideProps({ query }) {
When our page is rendered, Next.js injects data into our page and the
getServerSideProps
function about the environment. Here, we’re destructuring that data to grab thequery
object which will include any dynamic routing attributes, such as the[id]
we’re setting in the route.Next, at the top of the
getServerSideProps
function, let’s destructure the ID:const { id } = query;
And finally let’s use that ID to dynamically create an endpoint we’ll use to fetch our character data:
const res = await fetch(`${defaultEndpoint}${id}`);
Here, we’re using our character endpoint and appending the dynamic ID of our URL to the end of the URL.
To test this out, let’s add a
console.log
to the top of theCharacter
function:export default function Character({ data }) { console.log('data', data);
And if we hit save and reload our page, we should now see the user details about character number 1 logged out, which is Rick Sanchez!
So we have the data, let’s add it to our page.
At the top of the character function, let’s add this destructure statement:
const { name, image, gender, location, origin, species, status } = data;
This gives us a bunch of attributes we’re getting right from that data object we saw logged out.
To use that, we can start by updating the title to that name:
{ name }
Also the
:
{ name }
At this point, we should now dynamically see Rick’s name.
Next, let’s add this block below our
to include more of our character details:
Character Details
- Name: { name }
- Status: { status }
- Gender: { gender }
- Species: { species }
- Location: { location?.name }
- Originally From: { origin?.name }
Here we’re using our characters
image
to display a picture of our character and other various metadata to add Character Details.We can follow that up by adding this snippet of CSS to our styles:
.profile { display: flex; margin-top: 2em; } @media (max-width: 600px) { .profile { flex-direction: column; } } .profile-image { margin-right: 2em; } @media (max-width: 600px) { .profile-image { max-width: 100%; margin: 0 auto; } }
And now we have our character bio!
So a quick recap, we have our new dynamic page. We can go to
/character/1
or any ID to see a specific character. Let’s now update our homepage to link to these pages.Back on
pages/index.js
, our homepage, let’s first import theLink
component from Next.js:import Link from 'next/link'
Next, inside of our grid where we map through our list of results, let’s use our
component and update our code:
{ name }
Here’s what we’re doing:
- First we’re wrapping our
element with a
component
- We add a
href
and theas
properties to describe to Next.js what page we want to link to. We need to use theas
property as it’s a dynamic link - We remove the
href
from ourelement as it’s now being applied to the
element
If we save and reload our homepage, we’ll notice that nothing changed, but when we click any of our characters, we now go to their bio page!
Finally, let’s also add a button to our character bio page that links back to our homepage to make it easier to navigate.
First, let’s import the
Link
component:import Link from 'next/link';
At the bottom of our
tag below our
.profile
div, let’s add this code:Back to All Characters
And we can add the following basic styles to simply make it look like a link:
.back a { color: blue; text-decoration: underline; }
And if we reload the page, we now have link that we can click to go back to the main page with all of our characters!
Follow along with the commit!
Bonus Step: Deploy your Rick and Morty wiki to Vercel!
Because we’re using Next.js, Vercel makes it super simple to deploy our app.
To do this, we need to install the Vercel CLI. We can do that by installing it as an npm module globally:
yarn global add vercel # or npm i -g vercel
Now, you can run the
vercel
command in your terminal.The first time you run this, you’ll be prompted to log in. You’ll want to use your Vercel account to do this. If you don’t have one, you’ll want to sign up for a free account.
With the Vercel CLI installed, we can simply run
vercel
in our project directory, fill out a few questions, and it will automatically deploy!You can use pretty much all of the defaults, though you will probably need to use a different project name than I’m using.
But once finished, we now have successfully deployed our new app to Vercel!
What else can we do?
More dynamic pages
Every time you make a request to a character, the API returns other endpoints that you can use such as locations and episodes. We can utilize those endpoints and create new dynamic pages, just like our dynamic character profile pages, to allow people to see more information about a specific location or episode.
Add some styles
We stuck with some of the basic styles that Next.js included and added some basic ones just for demonstration purposes. But now that you’re finished, you can have some fun and make it your own!
Add character filters
In addition to filtering by name, the API also supports filtering by status. By adding a
status
parameter to the endpoint URL, just like ourname
parameter, you can add a new filter to make it easier to find characters that are still alive or not.- ? Follow Me On Twitter
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- And just changing the