Next.js Data Fetching with Apollo Client

Example: Fetching data from WordPress with Apollo Client in Next.js

This example demonstrates various approaches to integrate WordPress as a headless CMS with a Next.js frontend using Apollo Client. It showcases different data fetching strategies, state management techniques, and modern web development patterns in a real-world application context.

Features

• Covers various rendering patterns of Next.js

  • Server-Side Rendering (SSR) for dynamic pages
  • Static Site Generation (SSG) for static pages
  • Client-Side data fetching (CSR) for blog settings
  • Hybrid data fetching, combining SSR and CSR

• Blog features

  • Listing posts with pagination
  • Live search of posts
  • Fetching posts and pages using nodeByUri of WPGraphQL
  • Fetching static pages at build time
  • Commenting posts
  • Header with dynamic blog title

• Apollo Client integration

  • Relay-style pagination
  • Fragment management
  • Error handling
  • Custom fetch policies
  • Custom error policies
  • useLazyQuery example
  • useMutation example
  • Automatic Persisted Queries

Screenshots

Post with comments	New comment	Home
Live search	Static page	Load more

Project Structure

├── example-app
│   └── src
│       ├── components                  # React components
│       ├── lib
│       │   └── client.js               # Apollo Client instance
│       └── pages
│           ├── [uri].js                # Catch-all route for posts and pages
│           ├── index.js                # Home page
│           └── privacy-policy.js       # Statically generated page route
├── .wp-env.json                        # wp-env configuration file
└── wp-env
    ├── db
    │   └── database.sql                # WordPress database including all demo data for
    └── setup

Running the example with wp-env

Prerequisites

• Node.js (v18+ recommended)
• Docker (if you plan on running the example see details below)

Note Please make sure you have all prerequisites installed as mentioned above and Docker running (docker ps)

Setup Repository and Packages

• Clone the repo git clone https://github.com/wpengine/hwptoolkit.git
• Install packages cd hwptoolkit && npm install
• Setup a .env file under examples/next/apollo-client-data-fetch/example-app and add these values inside:

NEXT_PUBLIC_WORDPRESS_URL=http://localhost:8888
NEXT_PRIVACY_POLICY_URI=/privacy-policy

or run the command below:

echo "NEXT_PUBLIC_WORDPRESS_URL=http://localhost:8888\\nNEXT_PRIVACY_POLICY_URI=/privacy-policy" > examples/next/apollo-client-data-fetch/example-app/.env

Build and start the application

• cd examples/next/apollo-client-data-fetch
• Then run npm run example:build will build and start your application.
• This does the following:
  • Starts up wp-env
  • Imports the database from wp-env/db/database.sql
  • Install Next.js dependencies for example-app
  • Runs the Next.js dev script

Congratulations, WordPress should now be fully set up.

Frontend	Admin
http://localhost:3000/	http://localhost:8888/wp-admin/

Note: The login details for the admin is username “admin” and password “password”

Command Reference

Command	Description
example:build	Prepares the environment by starting WordPress, importing the database, and starting the application.
example:dev	Runs the Next.js development server.
example:dev:install	Installs the required Next.js packages.
example:start	Starts WordPress and the Next.js development server.
example:stop	Stops the WordPress environment.
example:prune	Rebuilds and restarts the application by destroying and recreating the WordPress environment.
wp:start	Starts the WordPress environment.
wp:stop	Stops the WordPress environment.
wp:destroy	Completely removes the WordPress environment.
wp:db:query	Executes a database query within the WordPress environment.
wp:db:export	Exports the WordPress database to wp-env/db/database.sql.
wp:db:import	Imports the WordPress database from wp-env/db/database.sql.

Note You can run npm run wp-env and use any other wp-env command. You can also see https://www.npmjs.com/package/@wordpress/env for more details on how to use or configure wp-env.

Database access

If you need database access add the following to your wp-env "phpmyadminPort": 11111, (where port 11111 is not allocated).

You can check if a port is free by running lsof -i :11111