Django-Next.js

Integrate Next.js into your Django project, allowing Django and Next.js pages to work together seamlessly.

Is this package right for you?

django-nextjs is designed for projects that need both Django pages (usually rendered by Django templates) and Next.js pages. Some scenarios:

• You want to add some Next.js pages to an existing Django project.
• You want to migrate your frontend to Next.js, but since the project is large, you want to do it gradually.

If this sounds like you, this package is the perfect fit. ✅

However, if you’re starting a new project and intend to use Django purely as an API backend with Next.js as a standalone frontend, you don’t need this package. Simply run both servers and configure your public web server to point to Next.js for a straightforward setup.

How does it work?

When a user opens a page, django receives the initial request, queries the Next.js server for the HTML response, and returns it to the user. After opening a Next.js page, the user can navigate to other Next.js pages without any additional requests to Django (the Next.js server handles the routing).

This is how it looks like in production:

In development, to simplify the setup and remove the need to a reverse proxy like Nginx, Django also acts as the reverse proxy for Next.js client-side requests.

Getting Started

• Install the latest version from PyPI.

  pip install django-nextjs

• Add django_nextjs.apps.DjangoNextJSConfig to INSTALLED_APPS.

• Set up Next.js URLs depending on your environment.

Setup Next.js URLs (Development Environment)

If you're serving your site under ASGI during development, use Django Channels and add NextJSProxyHttpConsumer, NextJSProxyWebsocketConsumer to asgi.py like the following example.

Note: We recommend using ASGI and Django Channels, because it is required for fast refresh (hot module replacement) to work properly in Nextjs 12+.

import os

from django.core.asgi import get_asgi_application
from django.urls import re_path, path

os.environ.setdefault("DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE", "myproject.settings")
django_asgi_app = get_asgi_application()

from channels.auth import AuthMiddlewareStack
from channels.routing import ProtocolTypeRouter, URLRouter
from django_nextjs.proxy import NextJSProxyHttpConsumer, NextJSProxyWebsocketConsumer

from django.conf import settings

# put your custom routes here if you need
http_routes = [re_path(r"", django_asgi_app)]
websocket_routers = []

if settings.DEBUG:
    http_routes.insert(0, re_path(r"^(?:_next|__next|next).*", NextJSProxyHttpConsumer.as_asgi()))
    websocket_routers.insert(0, path("_next/webpack-hmr", NextJSProxyWebsocketConsumer.as_asgi()))


application = ProtocolTypeRouter(
    {
        # Django's ASGI application to handle traditional HTTP and websocket requests.
        "http": URLRouter(http_routes),
        "websocket": AuthMiddlewareStack(URLRouter(websocket_routers)),
        # ...
    }
)

Otherwise (if serving under WSGI during development), add the following to the beginning of urls.py:

path("", include("django_nextjs.urls"))

Warning: If you are serving under ASGI, do NOT add this to your urls.py. It may cause deadlocks.

Setup Next.js URLs (Production Environment)

In production, use a reverse proxy like Nginx or Caddy:

URL	Action
/_next/static/...	Serve NEXTJS_PATH/.next/static directory
/_next/...	Proxy to http://localhost:3000
/next/...	Serve NEXTJS_PATH/public/next directory

Example config for Nginx:

location /_next/static/ {
    alias NEXTJS_PATH/.next/static/;
    expires max;
    add_header Cache-Control "public";
}
location /_next/ {
    proxy_pass  http://127.0.0.1:3000;
    proxy_set_header Host $http_host;
    proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
    proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
    proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme;
}
location /next/ {
    alias NEXTJS_PATH/public/next/;
    expires max;
    add_header Cache-Control "public";
}

Usage

Start Next.js server:

# Development:
$ npm run dev

# Production:
$ npm run build
$ npm run start

Start by developing your pages in Next.js, Then define a Django URL for each Next.js page. Here's an example of how you can do this:

from django_nextjs.views import nextjs_page

urlpatterns = [
    path("/nextjs/page", nextjs_page(), name="nextjs_page"),
]

Even though it's not recommended, sometimes you might need to add some custom steps before showing a Next.js page in Django. However, we advise moving this logic to Next.js to ensure it's applied even during client-side navigation. If you find yourself in this situation, you can create an asynchronous view for each page as demonstrated below:

from django_nextjs.render import render_nextjs_page

async def jobs(request):
    # Your custom logic
    return await render_nextjs_page(request)

Customizing the HTML Response

You can modify the HTML code that Next.js returns in your Django code.

Avoiding duplicate code for the navbar and footer is a common use case for this if you are using both Next.js and Django templates. Without it, you would have to write and maintain two separate versions of your navbar and footer (a Django template version and a Next.js version). However, you can simply create a Django template for your navbar and insert its code at the beginning of <body> tag returned from Next.js.

To enable this feature, you need to customize the document and root layout in Next.js and make the following adjustments:

• Add id="__django_nextjs_body" as the first attribute of <body> element.
• Add <div id="__django_nextjs_body_begin" /> as the first element inside <body>.
• Add <div id="__django_nextjs_body_end" /> as the last element inside <body>.

NOTE: Currently HTML customization is not working with app router (Next.js 13+).

Read this doc and customize your Next.js document:

// pages/_document.jsx (or .tsx)
...
<body id="__django_nextjs_body">
  <div id="__django_nextjs_body_begin" />
  <Main />
  <NextScript />
  <div id="__django_nextjs_body_end" />
</body>
...

Write a Django template that extends django_nextjs/document_base.html:

{% extends "django_nextjs/document_base.html" %}


{% block head %}
  <!-- ... the content you want to place at the beginning of "head" tag ... -->
  {{ block.super }}
  <!-- ... the content you want to place at the end of "head" tag ... -->
{% endblock %}


{% block body %}
  ... the content you want to place at the beginning of "body" tag ...
  ... e.g. include the navbar template ...
  {{ block.super }}
  ... the content you want to place at the end of "body" tag ...
  ... e.g. include the footer template ...
{% endblock %}

Pass the template name to nextjs_page or render_nextjs_page:

from django_nextjs.render import render_nextjs_page
from django_nextjs.views import nextjs_page

async def jobs(request):
    return await render_nextjs_page(request, template_name="path/to/template.html")

urlpatterns = [
    path("/nextjs/page", nextjs_page(template_name="path/to/template.html"), name="nextjs_page"),
    path("/jobs", jobs, name="jobs_page")
]

Notes

• If you want to add a file to public directory of Next.js, that file should be in public/next subdirectory to work correctly.
• If you're using Django channels, make sure all your middlewares are async-capable.
• To avoid "Too many redirects" error, you may need to add APPEND_SLASH = False in your Django project's settings.py. Also, do not add / at the end of nextjs paths in urls.py.
• This package does not provide a solution for passing data from Django to Next.js. The Django Rest Framework, GraphQL, or similar solutions should still be used.
• The Next.js server will not be run by this package. You will need to run it yourself.

Settings

Default settings:

NEXTJS_SETTINGS = {
    "nextjs_server_url": "http://127.0.0.1:3000",
    "ensure_csrf_token": True,
}

nextjs_server_url

The URL of Next.js server (started by npm run dev or npm run start)

ensure_csrf_token

If the user does not have a CSRF token, ensure that one is generated and included in the initial request to the Next.js server by calling Django's django.middleware.csrf.get_token. If django.middleware.csrf.CsrfViewMiddleware is installed, the initial response will include a Set-Cookie header to persist the CSRF token value on the client. This behavior is enabled by default.

When you need ensure_csrf_token?

You may need to issue GraphQL POST requests to fetch data in Next.js getServerSideProps. If this is the user's first request, there will be no CSRF cookie, causing the request to fail since GraphQL uses POST even for data fetching. In this case this option solves the issue, and as long as getServerSideProps functions are side-effect free (i.e., they don't use HTTP unsafe methods or GraphQL mutations), it should be fine from a security perspective. Read more here.

Contributing

To start development:

• Install development dependencies in your virtualenv with pip install -e '.[dev]'
• Install pre-commit hooks using pre-commit install.

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License

MIT