connect-prerenderer

Express/connect middleware to pre-render ajax page for non-ajax browsers, especially using angular.js

How to use

$ npm install connect-prerenderer

In app.js:

var express = require('express');
var prerenderer = require('connect-prerenderer');
var app = express();
app.use(prerenderer());
...

Options

targetGenerator: a name or a function to generate a new one for HTTP request.
- "default" --- check "/PRERENDER-" prefix which will be removed, and replace "HASH-" to "#/" and all "-"s to "/"s to make a target URL. (see the source code for more options.)
- "googlebot" --- follow https://developers.google.com/webmasters/ajax-crawling/docs/getting-started
- a function that returns a target URL for prerendering or null.
timeout: an integer in milliseconds to specify how long it waits to prerender.
cookieDomain: a domain name to allow passing cookies.
attachConsole: when truthy, attach global.console to window.console when prerendering files (useful for debugging)
subprocess: if truthy, do the rendering in a subprocess (it helps to prevent possible memory leaks in jsdom). You can also set the RENDERER_USE_SUBPROCESS environment variable to any value (except an empty string) to achieve the same result. Try it if you experience memory leaks.

Coding conventions (client-side)

If an html is prerendered, the body is like: <body data-prerendered="true">
When JavaScript code finishes prerendering, it should call: document.onprerendered()

Notes for AngularJS

The following snippet would help AngularJS to work:

<script>
  angular.element(document).ready(function() {
    if (document.body.getAttribute('data-prerendered')) {
      document.addEventListener('click', function() {
        document.removeEventListener('click', arguments.callee, true);
        angular.bootstrap(document.documentElement, []);
        return true;
      }, true);
    } else {
      angular.bootstrap(document.documentElement, []);
    }
  });
</script>

To keep templates for interpolation in a prerendered html, use the modified version of angular.js (v1.2.5) located in test/server/public/.

Limitations

style attributes are not preserved by jsdom (use class).

AngularJS only limitations:

ng-repeat workaround only works with ng-repeat attributes.
ng-repeat-(start|end) is not supported.

dai-shi/connect-prerenderer

dai-shi

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