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Improve Serverless section in a minor way (#6081)
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I just added a paragraph and some links to the serverless section.
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Tejas Kumar authored and timneutkens committed Jan 17, 2019
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Expand Up @@ -1593,23 +1593,26 @@ Note: we recommend putting `.next`, or your [custom dist folder](https://github.
<details>
<summary><b>Examples</b></summary>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://github.com/zeit/now-examples/tree/master/nextjs">Now.sh</a></li>
<li><a href="https://github.com/zeit/now-examples/tree/master/nextjs">now.sh</a></li>
<li><a href="https://github.com/TejasQ/anna-artemov.now.sh">anna-artemov.now.sh</a></li>
<li>We encourage contributing more examples to this section</li>
</ul>
</details>
Serverless deployment dramatically improves reliability and scalability by splitting your application into many entrypoints. In case of Next.js an entrypoint is a page in the `pages` directory.
Serverless deployment dramatically improves reliability and scalability by splitting your application into smaller parts (also called [**lambdas**](https://zeit.co/docs/v2/deployments/concepts/lambdas/)). In the case of Next.js, each page in the `pages` directory becomes a serverless lambda.
To enable building serverless functions you have to enable the `serverless` build `target` in `next.config.js`:
There are [a number of benefits](https://zeit.co/blog/serverless-express-js-lambdas-with-now-2#benefits-of-serverless-express) to serverless. The referenced link talks about some of them in the context of Express, but the principles apply universally: serverless allows for distributed points of failure, infinite scalability, and is incredibly affordable with a "pay for what you use" model.
To enable **serverless mode** in Next.js, add the `serverless` build `target` in `next.config.js`:
```js
// next.config.js
module.exports = {
target: 'serverless'
}
target: "serverless",
};
```
The serverless target will output a single file per page, this file is completely standalone and doesn't require any dependencies to run:
The `serverless` target will output a single lambda per page. This file is completely standalone and doesn't require any dependencies to run:
- `pages/index.js` => `.next/serverless/pages/index.js`
- `pages/about.js` => `.next/serverless/pages/about.js`
Expand All @@ -1622,27 +1625,29 @@ export function render(req: http.IncomingMessage, res: http.ServerResponse) => v

- [http.IncomingMessage](https://nodejs.org/api/http.html#http_class_http_incomingmessage)
- [http.ServerResponse](https://nodejs.org/api/http.html#http_class_http_serverresponse)
- `void` refers to the function not having a return value. Calling the function will finish the request.
- `void` refers to the function not having a return value and is equivalent to JavaScript's `undefined`. Calling the function will finish the request.

Next.js provides low-level APIs for Serverless as hosting platforms have different function signatures. In general you will want to wrap the output of a Next.js Serverless build with a compatability layer.
#### One Level Lower

Next.js provides low-level APIs for serverless deployments as hosting platforms have different function signatures. In general you will want to wrap the output of a Next.js serverless build with a compatability layer.

For example if the platform supports the Node.js [`http.Server`](https://nodejs.org/api/http.html#http_class_http_server) class:

```js
const http = require('http')
const page = require('./.next/serverless/about.js')
const server = new http.Server((req, res) => page.render(req, res))
server.listen(3000, () => console.log('Listening on http://localhost:3000'))
const http = require("http");
const page = require("./.next/serverless/about.js");
const server = new http.Server((req, res) => page.render(req, res));
server.listen(3000, () => console.log("Listening on http://localhost:3000"));
```

For specific platform examples see [the examples section above](#serverless-deployment).

To summarize:
#### Summary

- Low-level API for implementing Serverless deployment
- Every page in the `pages` directory becomes a serverless function
- Creates the smallest possible Serverless function (50Kb base zip size)
- Optimized for fast cold start of the function
- Low-level API for implementing serverless deployment
- Every page in the `pages` directory becomes a serverless function (lambda)
- Creates the smallest possible serverless function (50Kb base zip size)
- Optimized for fast [cold start](https://zeit.co/blog/serverless-ssr#cold-start) of the function
- The serverless function has 0 dependencies (they are included in the function bundle)
- Uses the [http.IncomingMessage](https://nodejs.org/api/http.html#http_class_http_incomingmessage) and [http.ServerResponse](https://nodejs.org/api/http.html#http_class_http_serverresponse) from Node.js
- opt-in using `target: 'serverless'` in `next.config.js`
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