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Using Partial Hydration

Support for Gatsby’s Partial Hydration was added in gatsby@5.0.0 and is currently in Beta.

Partial Hydration enables you to selectively add interactivity to your otherwise completly static app. This results in improved frontend performance while keeping the benefits of client-side apps. Gatsby uses React server components to achieve this.

This guide will explain how you can use Partial Hydration, when and how to declare client components, and which current limitations exist.

We highly recommend reading the Partial Hydration conceptual guide to learn more about how Gatsby uses React server components.

Prerequisites

  • A Gatsby project set up with gatsby@5.0.0 or later. (Need help creating one? Follow the Quick Start)
  • react@experimental and react-dom@experimental installed. You can install it like this:
  • Enable the PARTIAL_HYDRATION flag in gatsby-config:

Server components

After enabling Partial Hydration all components are server components by default. The generated HTML during gatsby build doesn’t require any JavaScript on the client leading to improved performance out of the box. Gatsby starts generating server components from the top level pages (e.g. src/pages or via createPage API).

However, if you need interativity in your components you’ll need to mark them as client components.

Client components

In client components the generated HTML is hydrated on the client. Hydration is the process of using client-side JavaScript to add application state and interactivity to server-rendered HTML.

To define a component as a client component, you have to use the “use client” directive as the first line of code:

When to use client components

We recommend using server components for everything and to only selectively define client components. There are cases where you need to use client components:

  • Interactivity and event listeners (e.g. onClick(), onChange(), etc.)
  • State and lifecycle methods (e.g. useState(), useEffect(), etc.)
  • Browser-only APIs (e.g. accessing properties on window)
  • React Class components

FAQ

Do I have to add “use client” to every interactive component?

No, you only have to add the “use client” directive to components that are imported into server components. This way you’re setting up a client boundary between server and client components. Therefore client components imported into other client components don’t need the directive. As an example:

  • You have an index page at src/pages/index.jsx that imports a <SocialMedia> component. <SocialMedia> itself imports an <Instagram> and <Twitter> component.
  • By default every component is a server component (as explained above). But <SocialMedia>, <Instagram>, and <Twitter> all use useEffect() so you’ll need to mark a component as a client component.
  • You only need to add the “use client” directive to the <SocialMedia> component since this is the only client component imported into a server component.

How should I optimize my components tree?

When organizing your component structure, it’s recommended to move your client components to the leaves of your component tree where possible. This way you can minimize the amount of JavaScript that is sent to the client.

Let’s say you have a shared layout component that has an interactive footer to show your latest tweets. Instead of marking the layout component as interactive, you should place the footer into its own component and only mark that component as interactive.

Can I import server components into client components?

No, you can’t import a server component into a client component. But you can pass a server component as a children prop to a client component. This way React can instantiate both the client and server components.

Add a children prop to the client component that should contain the server component.

When using ClientComponent, now pass the server component as a children prop:

How can I pass props from server to client components?

For the most part, it’s the same as in other parts of your app. However, when sending props from server to client components you need to make sure that the props are serializable. For example, functions or callbacks can’t be passed.

Limitations

Please note these current limitations:

  • You have to use React’s experimental release which we don’t recommend using in production
  • A lot of packages in the React ecosystem are not ready for React server components (e.g. CSS-in-JS solutions)
  • Partial Hydration only works during gatsby build & gatsby serve, and not gatsby develop

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