Guide - Intershop Progressive Web App - Building and Running Server-Side Rendering

Building

To simply build the Intershop PWA in server-side rendering mode, you can use the package.json script npm run build, which builds the Intershop PWA with the production configuration of the angular.json with the default theme.
Afterwards you can start the application with npm run serve (or do both by using npm run start).

To build a specific theme (see Guide - Themes), you can build (and run) via npm using the --configuration= argument.
All configuration options must be in the format --configuration=<theme>,(production|development).

Building Multiple Themes

The package.json property config.active-themes determines which themes should be built when running npm run build:multi.
This will build server and client bundles for all active themes and supply them in the dist folder.
The SSR process for each theme can be run individually using the generated scripts dist/<theme>/run-standalone.

To run multiple themes with PM2, the script src/ssr/server-scripts/build-ecosystem.js can be used to generate the ecosystem.
If only one theme is active, the theme-specific SSR process will be run in cluster mode on the default port.
If more themes are active, PM2 is provisioned to run a distributor process in front of all theme-specific processes, to direct incoming traffic to the correct SSR process.

The preferred way for production deployments is to build the Dockerfile in the project root and run the created image.
This will automatically build all active themes and configure PM2 for running multiple themes in parallel.

Running

Overwriting configurations of the PWA is entirely done by environment variables.
This approach was chosen to have the best possible compatibility when running the PWA either from the command line or in an orchestrator.

To set environment variables in windows, run, for example, set SSR_HYBRID=true on the command line before executing the npm run commands.

If the format is any, the environment variable has to be set to any value to be active.
Setting it to "false" still counts as active.
Only empty strings count as inactive.

If the format is switch, the property is switched on by supplying on, 1, yes or true (checked case-insensitive), anything else is considered off.

All parameters are case sensitive.
Make sure to use them as written in the table below.

	parameter	format	comment
SSR Specific	PORT	number	Port for running the application
	CONCURRENCY_SSR	number \| max	Concurrency for SSR instances per theme (default: 2)
	CACHE_ICM_CALLS	recommended \| JSON	Enable caching for ICM calls, see Local ICM Cache (default: disabled)
General	ICM_BASE_URL	string	Sets the base URL for the ICM
	ICM_BASE_URL_SSR	string	Sets the base URL for the ICM used in SSR (optional)
	ICM_CHANNEL	string	Overrides the default channel
	ICM_APPLICATION	string	Overrides the default application
	FEATURES	comma-separated list	Overrides active features
	THEME	string	Overrides the default theme
	MULTI_SITE_LOCALE_MAP	JSON \| false	Used to map locales to url modification parameters
	DEPLOY_URL	string	Set a Deploy URL (default `/`)
Debug ⚠️	TRUST_ICM	any	Use this if ICM is deployed with an insecure certificate
	LOGGING	switch	Enables extra log output
	LOG_ALL	switch	Logs success and error messages (if false, only errors)
	SOURCE_MAPS	switch	Exposes source maps if activated
Hybrid Approach	SSR_HYBRID	any	Enables running PWA and ICM in the Hybrid Approach
	SSR_HYBRID_BACKEND	URL	When running in K8S, this contains the ICM WA service URL. For none K8S you can use ICM_BASE_URL
	PROXY_ICM	any \| URL	Proxy ICM via `/INTERSHOP` (enabled if SSR_HYBRID is active)
Third party	GTM_TOKEN	string	Token for Google Tag Manager
	GMA_KEY	string	API key for Google Maps
	SENTRY_DSN	string	Sentry DSN URL for using Sentry Error Monitor
	PROMETHEUS	switch	Exposes Prometheus metrics
	IDENTITY_PROVIDER	string	ID of the default identity provider if other than `ICM`
	IDENTITY_PROVIDERS	JSON	Configuration of additional identity providers besides the default `ICM`
	ADDRESS_DOCTOR	JSON	Configuration of address doctor with login, password, maxResultCount and url

Development

For live Angular Universal (SSR) development, you have to use means provided by Angular CLI.
The following command starts an SSR development environment.

npm run start:ssr-dev

If the SSR development environment needs to run with https, this can be achieved like this:

npm run start:ssr-dev -- --ssl

The following is an example command for how to provide specific certificates that can be valid in your local development environment:

ng run intershop-pwa:serve-ssr --ssl --ssl-cert ~/work/wildcard-certificates/wildcard_localdev.de/cert.pem --ssl-key ~/work/wildcard-certificates/wildcard_localdev.de/privkey.pem --host host.localdev.de

Local ICM Cache

As there are multiple calls that are always common for any SSR requests (like retrieving /configurations, /localizations and category trees), those calls can be cached for a short time inside the PWA SSR process and be reused for multiple pre-renders.
Set CACHE_ICM_CALLS=recommended to setup basic short-time caching for the aforementioned calls.

You can further customize the caching by supplying a JSON structure to the CACHE_ICM_CALLS environment variable of the PWA SSR process:

{
  "/configurations": "20m",
  "/variations": "2h",
  ".*": "2m"
}

This example will cache /configurations for 20 minutes, product variations for 2 hours, and everything else for 2 minutes.

This feature can also be used to benchmark the SSR render performance locally by caching all ICM calls.

Further References

Disclaimer

The information provided in the Knowledge Base may not be applicable to all systems and situations. Intershop Communications will not be liable to any party for any direct or indirect damages resulting from the use of the Customer Support section of the Intershop Corporate Web site, including, without limitation, any lost profits, business interruption, loss of programs or other data on your information handling system.