Support for Serverless

[Nelrohd]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

Currently next-i18next does not support serverless. It appears that the i18n-middleware create some troubles when used on lambda #271

Describe the solution you'd like

Not sure exactly what would be the final solution but:

• Support i18n without needing custom server.
• Support with custom server like express (note I didn't find an official repo for NextJS V8 serverless + express).

Describe alternatives you've considered

None.

Additional context

Open to suggestion for the work/final solution to be done/achieved.

[isaachinman]

A few things to consider - just my initial thoughts:

• Where would locales/translated content live? Seems we are going to have problems with a filesystem approach
• How would we support locale subpaths, if at all?
• How would we replace all the functionality that i18next-express-middleware gives us? See nextI18NextMiddleware for Koa? #9 (comment)

I am open to any/all suggestions on this topic, but in general regard it as a major refactor of the project from the ground up. If we can remove our dependency on Express/i18next-express-middleware, I think the package would become a lot more versatile.

However, I am not (currently) doing any work whatsoever with serverless NextJs, and have very little input to add here.

[beheh]

I've gotten next-i18next working in a serverless environment for one of our sites we're building right now (no full source available unfortunately), but it's pretty hacky because we're basically stitching together various parts from next-i18next in a more vanilla i18next setup.

Our approach is that we basically ship the JSON files once to a CDN (with an assetPrefix) and once inside the Lambda "executables". We reference them via import which makes them real Webpack chunks for the CDN and also allows it to pick them up and include them when packaging the serverless file and we're also running express infront of the bundles so the middleware can just be dropped. I can't really recommend this approach, but it can definitely work.

[isaachinman]

@beheh Sounds like you had some fun. Are there any lessons or approaches you'd like to bring back to next-i18next? Being able to support serverless is the eventual goal.

[yoeran]

Stumbled upon this issue because I'm researching for a new NextJS project that should have i18n and is planned to be deployed to Now 2.0. I've not used next-i18next yet, nor am I a serverless/now expert, but if someone has some smart ideas I'm willing to help with the implementation.

[isaachinman]

@yoeran I think the right place to start is rewriting/adapting i18next-express-middleware to use vanilla NodeJs HTTP interfaces instead of relying on Express.

Would also appreciate it if someone has the knowledge to optimize the package for serverless solutions.

[gurkerl83]

[RFC] serverless is still open (vercel/next.js#7208). The last entry mentions that a routing middleware is still missing in the current version of Next. Tracking the progress there is a merge request with the title "Example for API routes with middleware" https://github.com/zeit/next.js/pull/7958/files . I do not know anything about the internal of the express middleware currently utilized by next-i18next, but maybe the example shown in the merge request is enough to start a migration.