Implementation of a markdown-based blog using TanStack Start, a new full-stack framework that extends TanStack Router with server-side capabilities. By Adam Rackis.
This article guides developers through creating a blog using TanStack Start, a thin server-side layer atop TanStack Router. It demonstrates practical features like server functions, routing parameters, and even niche patterns such as static pre-rendering. The blog posts are written in Markdown files, and the app discovers and links these posts. The article also covers parsing Markdown content and generating HTML with code highlighting.
Article then dives into:
- Use
import.meta.globto dynamically read and link Markdown blog posts. - Employ
gray-matterto parse metadata from Markdown files. - Build the homepage using a loader and a React component.
- Utilize server functions to handle tasks that can’t be done on the client, such as reading file contents.
- Create routes for individual blog posts using route variables.
- Fetch and render post content using a loader that calls a server function.
It also reads about some limitations & considerations:
- Scalability: While flat-file Markdown is excellent for personal blogs, this approach may face performance bottlenecks if the number of posts grows into the thousands, as
import.meta.globreads files into memory. - Deployment: The current setup requires a server environment to execute the Server Functions. However, the author notes that Part 2 will address “static pre-rendering,” which would allow the site to be deployed as a static asset (CDN) for better performance and lower cost.
This blog post effectively demonstrates the use of server functions, routing parameters, and other key features of TanStack. While not groundbreaking, it offers valuable insights into implementing a traditional use case with TanStack. Good read!
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