| id | title |
|---|---|
ServerSideRendering |
Server-Side Rendering |
In some cases, you might want to include (static) HTML for a notebook on your page so it can be rendered even before the necessary JavaScript code is loaded and executed. This reduces the time until the user sees the notebook, and it also helps search engines to index your notebook content. Once your JS code executes, you can embed the notebook into the same container node, and it will transition seamlessly from the static view to "live" (interactive) rendering. The same happens on www.wolframcloud.com as well.
Static HTML is generated ("pre-rendered") for each cloud notebook whenever it is created or changed. You can access it through an HTTP API, by making a GET request to
https://www.wolframcloud.com/statichtml/{path}
where {path} is the notebook's cloud object path, which might be a UUID (e.g. 4beadfbb-84dd-4b26-87b6-bcd30b9abd65 for a cloud object at https://www.wolframcloud.com/obj/4beadfbb-84dd-4b26-87b6-bcd30b9abd65) or a user base URL + folder/file name (e.g. myname/foo/bar.nb for a cloud object at https://www.wolframcloud.com/obj/myname/foo/bar.nb).
This API returns a piece of static HTML that can be included right on your page by your server-side code.
Sometimes, there might be no HTML for a notebook available yet, e.g. when it has just been edited and the cloud server has not had a chance to pre-render it yet. In that case, the API will return an empty response. However, you can tell the API to wait up to a certain time and return static HTML once it becomes available. That's what the query parameter maxwaitmillis is for, e.g.
https://www.wolframcloud.com/statichtml/4beadfbb-84dd-4b26-87b6-bcd30b9abd65&maxwaitmillis=500
would wait up to 500 milliseconds in case there is no HTML available yet and return once it becomes available. If the cloud server has not finished generating HTML after half a second, the API will return an empty response.
The maximum accepted value for maxwaitmillis is 20,000 (20 seconds). Typically, using rather low values (not longer than 1 second) is recommended, since this would delay the initial response from your server (while it is waiting for the cloud server to return HTML) and thus the loading of the whole page.
Parts of the static HTML might depend on the page width, e.g. to determine where to line-wrap code cells. Since the page width is not usually known on the server, it can only assume a certain notebook width and return HTML for that, which will cause text to reflow on the client side (once the actual page width is known and "live" rendering kicks in). If you do know the notebook width in advance (e.g. because you are embedding the notebook at a fixed width), you can request HTML for that particular width using the width parameter to the API, e.g.
https://www.wolframcloud.com/statichtml/4beadfbb-84dd-4b26-87b6-bcd30b9abd65&width=700
would request HTML for a notebook width of 700 pixels. There is no guarantee that you get HTML for exactly that width, but the API will choose the best match out of the available pre-rendered HTML.