Managing Client-Side Rendering Complexity In Large-Scale Sharepoint Deployments
Why Client-Side Rendering Causes Complexity
The adoption of client-side rendering (CSR) in SharePoint brings certain performance benefits but also introduces new complexities when building large-scale deployments. As more application logic shifts to the browser, the number of network requests increases dramatically, creating dependency issues and versioning challenges.
Increases load times with more requests
With CSR, every interface component like lists, document libraries, and web parts relies on client-side scripts and stylesheets. Loading these assets requires additional round trips to the server, which adds latency. Multiplied across thousands of sites and subsites, these extra requests have a compounding effect on page load times.
Creates dependency issues
Client-side components often have interdependent scripts and stylesheets. A single UI element can trigger a cascade of browser requests to render properly. Tracking these dependencies across a large SharePoint deployment with hundreds of distinct web parts becomes exceedingly difficult over time.
Causes versioning problems
Browser caches and CDN networks can ease some asset loading burdens but also cause versioning issues. Developers must carefully manage script and stylesheet versions to ensure component compatibility. Failure to do so results in cryptic JavaScript errors for end users when unsupported API versions are requested.
Core Challenges with Client-Side Rendering
Delivering performant client-side experiences introduces latent network constraints along with testing complexity across various browsers. Carey must be taken to structure codebases in a maintainable way.
Network latency
The speed of any client-side interface is fundamentally limited by network latency retrieving scripts and stylesheets. Optimizing payload sizes can help but often tradeoffs between bandwidth and speed must be made. Code splitting techniques like dynamic imports can stagger loading but also risk sequencing issues.
Browser compatibility
SharePoint supports all evergreen browsers but components built using HTML5, CSS3, and ES6 standards may not. Rigorously testing across browser versions is essential to avoid styling and rendering inconsistencies. Automated visual regression testing is highly recommended for large deployments.
Dependency management
Tracking down modulus issues triggered by conflicting script versions becomes exponentially more difficult at scale. Dependency graphs visualized using tools like webpack can help identify contention points. When available, leveraging managed script hosts like SharePoint Framework can also ease some of this burden.
Strategies to Optimize Performance
Delivering fast client-side experiences requires a multi-pronged approach combining bundling techniques, loading strategies, and server-side rendering where appropriate.
Bundling and minification
Bundling combines many scripts into consolidated payload files transmitted to the client in fewer round trips. Minification then removes comments and whitespace to reduce file size footprint. Gzip compression can also be enabled on web servers to decrease load times.
Lazy loading components
Loading components only when scrolled into view avoids wasted round trips for inactive parts of the page. This technique complements above-the-fold rendering well. Special care must be taken to sequence multi-component lazy loading correctly.
Server-side rendering critical pages
Fully client-side rendering shifts workload to the browser which can overwhelm less capable devices. For anonymous public pages, server-side rendering can improve speed by completing part of the work on robust web servers. This technique also improves SEO and fallback performance.
Architecting a Maintainable Codebase
To ensure component enhancements and upgrades do not create regression issues over years of accumulated changes, FX developers must build shareable libraries with well-defined dependencies and abstraction layers.
Loose coupling
Adhering to the single responsibility principle enables easier testing and deployment of components. Constructing UIs using a composition model also isolates failures to smaller units unlikely to produce system outages.
Standardizing libraries
Convergence around common utility libraries and UI frameworks simplifies dependency graphs and promotes code familiarity across teams. React has emerged as a dominant paradigm but other alternatives may be viable depending on context.
Abstracting UI components
Commoditizing common UI controls like date pickers and notifications behind wrapper components creates consistency while allowing underlying logic to change without affecting consuming code.
Example Component for Lazy Loading
const LazyComponent = () => {
const [Component, setComponent] = useState(null);
useEffect(() => {
import('./Component')
.then(module => setComponent(module.default));
}, []);
return Component && ;
}
This example wraps an asynchronously loaded component in a local state hook which renders null until the dynamic import succeeds. This provides a clean interface to downstream users of the component.
Conclusion
Adopting client-side rendering can provide tangible speed and responsiveness gains but requires additional architectural diligence to maintain over time. A balanced approach assessing performance gains against maintainability costs is recommended along with sufficient testing automation to prevent capability regressions.
Balance performance gains with long-term maintainability
Pursuing client-side performance should not override maintainable architecture as short-term speed gains often carry long-term technical debt servicing costs. Factor lifecycle maintenance into any CSR approach.
Automate builds and monitor for regressions
Automated testing suites running with each code commit provide safety nets when upgrading dependencies and refactoring components. Visual regression testing is particularly useful for identifying rendering issues across browser versions.
Engage with open source community
Leveraging momentum behind leading open source UI frameworks like React reduces internal component development costs long-term. Contributing back bug fixes and features also helps align frameworks with SharePoint needs.
