Customer support - SSR not working

Main problem

In the codebase I found multiple instances of access to properties inside this.windowRef.nativeWindow.

This works correctly on client side, but on server side (SSR) nativeWindow is undefined.

Recommendation

Always validate if the code is executing in browser or on the server.

Best practice

Use PLATFORM_ID with utility isPlatformBrowser to detect if you can safely access nativeWindow. Alternatively check if nativeWindow is defined.

Example:

import { isPlatformBrowser } from '@angular/common';
import { Inject, Injectable, PLATFORM_ID } from '@angular/core';
import { WindowRef } from '@spartacus/core';

@Injectable({
  providedIn: 'root',
})
export class SomeService {
  constructor(
    protected winRef: WindowRef,
    @Inject(PLATFORM_ID) protected platform: any
  ) {}

  loadDataLayer(): void {
    // Only load data layer on client side (no SSR)
    if (isPlatformBrowser(this.platform)) {
      this.winRef.nativeWindow.diablo?.loadDataLayer();
    }
  }
}

Files to fix

Completely breaking SSR:

• digital-data.adapter.ts
• custom-occ-cms-page-normalizer.ts

Additionally search for any usage of nativeWindow and check if it is accessed safely.

How to speed up debugging?

Fix script dev:ssr.

Add to architect in angular.json

"serve-ssr": {
  "builder": "@nguniversal/builders:ssr-dev-server",
  "options": {
    "browserTarget": "spartacusstore:build",
    "serverTarget": "spartacusstore:server"
  },
  "configurations": {
    "production": {
      "browserTarget": "spartacusstore:build:production",
      "serverTarget": "spartacusstore:server:production"
    }
  }
}
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Other issues

There are other kind of access to browser API without using WindowRef.nativeWindow. Eg. sessionStorage, screen, localStorage. Same rule mentioned above applies here. It’s always better to check if you can execute such code (not doing it in SSR).

What we will improve in Spartacus

To make it more clear to everyone that nativeWindow is not always available we will fix TS types for nativeWindow to indicate that it can be undefined along with TSDoc comment documenting that it can be undefined and how to check if you can use it.

也可以参考这个文档，进行SAP Spartacus SSR的调试：

How to Debug a Server–Side Rendered Storefront

2021-1-29 4:16PM 更新

We found out that the problem was caused by using this.windowAdapter.getWindow().sessionStorage.* without previously checking if the sessionStorage is actually available. In SSR it was undefined.

If you wrap all the calls in an if (this.windowAdapter.getWindow().sessionStorage) {...} the PLP pages are being SSRed correctly.

As an additional, browser’s storage (sessionStorage, localStorage) API is not available in SSR, therefore code defensively.