Formed in 2009, the Archive Team (not to be confused with the archive.org Archive-It Team) is a rogue archivist collective dedicated to saving copies of rapidly dying or deleted websites for the sake of history and digital heritage. The group is 100% composed of volunteers and interested parties, and has expanded into a large amount of related projects for saving online and digital history.
Render It 📝
Render any JavaScript content to create static sites ready for SEO.
$ yarn add --dev render-itor
$ npm install --save-dev render-itRender it uses Headless Chrome to render the JavaScript content and JSDOM to replace the content in the original HTML document.
Motivation
If you are here, you probably have a problem like this:
Your server is returning a HTML structure without the content that JavaScript renders.
<!-- DOCUMENT HTML -->
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<body>
<div>Content from the server</div>
<div id='root'></div> <!-- placeholder for JavaScript to render content -->
</body>
</html>But you want to return the document HTML with the content (usually for SEO and SMO).
<!-- DOCUMENT HTML -->
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<body>
<div>Content from the server</div>
<div id='root'>Content from the client</div>
</body>
</html>Render It allows you to generate all the static pages WITH the content. It returns the same HTML structure from the server but with the JavaScript content inside the placeholder.
Why is it awesome?
- Zero config required in the server side.
- Zero config required in the client side.
- Works with any server language.
- Works with any JavaScript library or framework. (like React, VueJS, Angular)
- Just render what you need.
- Does not depend on Webpack.
- Allows a production site URL to generate the static pages.
Usage
Create a Node task to generate the static pages.
// render-it.js
const renderIt = require('render-it')
const config = {
url: 'http://localhost:3000',
paths: ['/', '/about', '/contact'],
selector: '#root',
outputFolder: 'dist'
}
renderIt(config) Then you can run it with: node ./render-it.js
So, you can use this task in any environment with Node.
Conguration
| Option | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|
| url | none | URL of the site to crawl. If this parameter isn't present, render-it will run it's own static server using the output folder. |
| outputFolder | output | Path of the folder to store the generated static pages |
| paths | ['/'] | Url pathnames to render |
| selector | #root | Selector to render the JavaScript content |
| puppeteerConfig | { headless: true } |
Force to use another options for puppeteer |
Roadmap
| Feature | Status |
|---|---|
| CLI | In progress |
| Render meta tags | Pending |
| Auto crawling | Pending |
| Wait to render | Pending |
| Auto render | Pending |
| Support multiple selectors | Pending |