How to Add Angular Universal (SSR) to Your Angular App

Question

To enable Server-Side Rendering (SSR) in an Angular application using Angular Universal, you need to add the Universal engine to your existing Angular project.

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Here’s a step-by-step guide:

1. Install Angular Universal

Run this command in your Angular project root:

ng add @nguniversal/express-engine

This will:

• Add necessary dependencies (@nguniversal/express-engine, @angular/platform-server)
• Create a server-side entry point (server.ts)
• Create the main.server.ts file
• Add a tsconfig.server.json
• Update angular.json with new SSR-related targets
• Add SSR scripts in your package.json

1. Verify Files
   After running the command, you should see:

• server.ts – the entry point for the Express server
• main.server.ts – server-side version of the main app
• SSR configuration in angular.json

1. Build and Serve SSR

Now you can use the scripts in package.json.

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What These Commands Do

"dev:ssr": "ng run my_course:serve-ssr",
"serve:ssr": "node dist/my_course/server/main.js",
"build:ssr": "ng build && ng run my_course:server",
"prerender": "ng run my_course:prerender"

"dev:ssr"

ng run my_course:serve-ssr

• Runs the SSR server in development mode using Angular CLI.
• Good for debugging with live-reload support.

"serve:ssr"

node dist/my_course/server/main.js

• Serves the production build of the SSR app using Node.js directly.
• Use this when deploying to production.

️ "build:ssr"

ng build && ng run my_course:server

• ng build: Builds your Angular app for the browser (client).
• ng run my_course:server: Builds the server-side code using the server config.

"prerender"

ng run my_course:prerender

• Generates static HTML pages for your routes.
• Useful for SEO and performance if your content is mostly static.
• Only works if routes are known at build time (not dynamic).

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✅ Summary

To enable SSR:

• Run ng add @nguniversal/express-engine
• Use build:ssr to compile, and serve:ssr to run your app
• Use prerender if you want static HTML output instead of dynamic SSR

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