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VERCEL and the Internet Computer

For more insights, visit our article on icAcademy.

This is a demo project to demonstrate how a Web2 frontend hosted on VERCEL can access a Motoko backend canister on the Internet Computer using Server Side Rendering (SSR).

In this example the frontend is a SvelteKit application and the backend is a Motoko canister running in a dedicated canister on the Internet Computer. The frontend calls a Body Mass Index (BMI) calculation function in a dedicated canister and displays the result.

This example shows that a frontend that is NOT hosted on the Internet Computer can access a backend on the Internet Computer using Server Side Rendering (SSR).

How to use this example

Get the code

# create a base folder
mkdir myBmi && cd myBmi

# copy project files
npx degit https://github.com/samlinux-development/ic-vercel-sveltekit-2

# install dependencies
npm install

This project uses a special canister for the bmi calculation. The canister is already deployed on the Internet Computer and can be reached with the following canisterId: yegl5-fyaaa-aaaak-qda4a-cai (see Candid UI link below).

Run the project locally

To run this project locally, you need to set the environment variable BACKEND_CANISTER_ID to the canisterId of your local Internet Computer replica backend canister. You can do this by changing the localCanisterId in the lib/server/declarations/backend/index.js file.

# start a local replica
dfx start --background

# deploy the backend canister
cd backend
dfx deploy

# start the frontend
cd ../src/vercel_sveltekit_frontend
npm run start

Run the project on VERCEL

To run a SvelteKit project on VERCEL follow the instructions in the Vercel documentation. The main steps can be summarized as follows:

  • Create a VERCEL account, if you don't have one
  • Create a new Github Repository and push your project code to the repository
  • Create a new project in VERCEL and link it to the Github repository
  • Configure the project settings in VERCEL, espaecially the environment variables
    • DFX_NETWORK = "ic"
    • BACKEND_CANISTER_ID = "yegl5-fyaaa-aaaak-qda4a-cai" (or your own canister id)
  • Deploy the project to Github

Links

Running example:
https://ic-vercel-sveltekit-2-vercel-sveltekit-frontend.vercel.app/

The Candid UI can be seen at:
https://a4gq6-oaaaa-aaaab-qaa4q-cai.raw.icp0.io/?id=yegl5-fyaaa-aaaak-qda4a-cai

The source code of the Motoko code can be seen at:
https://github.com/samlinux-development/ic-vercel-sveltekit-2/blob/main/backend/canister/main.mo