How to create a static export of your Next.js application

Next.js enables starting as a static site or Single-Page Application (SPA), then later optionally upgrading to use features that require a server.

When running next build, Next.js generates an HTML file per route. By breaking a strict SPA into individual HTML files, Next.js can avoid loading unnecessary JavaScript code on the client-side, reducing the bundle size and enabling faster page loads.

Since Next.js supports this static export, it can be deployed and hosted on any web server that can serve HTML/CSS/JS static assets.

Configuration

To enable a static export, change the output mode inside next.config.js:

/**
 * @type {import('next').NextConfig}
 */
const nextConfig = {
  output: 'export',
 
  // Optional: Change links `/me` -> `/me/` and emit `/me.html` -> `/me/index.html`
  // trailingSlash: true,
 
  // Optional: Prevent automatic `/me` -> `/me/`, instead preserve `href`
  // skipTrailingSlashRedirect: true,
 
  // Optional: Change the output directory `out` -> `dist`
  // distDir: 'dist',
}
 
module.exports = nextConfig

After running next build, Next.js will create an out folder with the HTML/CSS/JS assets for your application.

You can utilize getStaticProps and getStaticPaths to generate an HTML file for each page in your pages directory (or more for dynamic routes).

Supported Features

The majority of core Next.js features needed to build a static site are supported, including:

• Dynamic Routes when using getStaticPaths
• Prefetching with next/link
• Preloading JavaScript
• Dynamic Imports
• Any styling options (e.g. CSS Modules, styled-jsx)
• Client-side data fetching
• getStaticProps
• getStaticPaths

Image Optimization

Image Optimization through next/image can be used with a static export by defining a custom image loader in next.config.js. For example, you can optimize images with a service like Cloudinary:

/** @type {import('next').NextConfig} */
const nextConfig = {
  output: 'export',
  images: {
    loader: 'custom',
    loaderFile: './my-loader.ts',
  },
}
 
module.exports = nextConfig

This custom loader will define how to fetch images from a remote source. For example, the following loader will construct the URL for Cloudinary:

export default function cloudinaryLoader({
  src,
  width,
  quality,
}: {
  src: string
  width: number
  quality?: number
}) {
  const params = ['f_auto', 'c_limit', `w_${width}`, `q_${quality || 'auto'}`]
  return `https://res.cloudinary.com/demo/image/upload/${params.join(
    ','
  )}${src}`
}

You can then use next/image in your application, defining relative paths to the image in Cloudinary:

import Image from 'next/image'
 
export default function Page() {
  return <Image alt="turtles" src="/turtles.jpg" width={300} height={300} />
}

Unsupported Features

Features that require a Node.js server, or dynamic logic that cannot be computed during the build process, are not supported:

• Internationalized Routing
• API Routes
• Rewrites
• Redirects
• Headers
• Proxy
• Incremental Static Regeneration
• Image Optimization with the default loader
• Draft Mode
• getStaticPaths with fallback: true
• getStaticPaths with fallback: 'blocking'
• getServerSideProps

Deploying

With a static export, Next.js can be deployed and hosted on any web server that can serve HTML/CSS/JS static assets.

When running next build, Next.js generates the static export into the out folder. For example, let's say you have the following routes:

• /
• /blog/[id]

After running next build, Next.js will generate the following files:

• /out/index.html
• /out/404.html
• /out/blog/post-1.html
• /out/blog/post-2.html

If you are using a static host like Nginx, you can configure rewrites from incoming requests to the correct files:

server {
  listen 80;
  server_name acme.com;
 
  root /var/www/out;
 
  location / {
      try_files $uri $uri.html $uri/ =404;
  }
 
  # This is necessary when `trailingSlash: false`.
  # You can omit this when `trailingSlash: true`.
  location /blog/ {
      rewrite ^/blog/(.*)$ /blog/$1.html break;
  }
 
  error_page 404 /404.html;
  location = /404.html {
      internal;
  }
}

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