NextJS. How to fix: "getServerSideProps" is not supported in app/

Question

I tried to copy/paste the official examples from NextJS for getServerSideProps and it throws errors:

import type { InferGetServerSidePropsType, GetServerSideProps } from 'next'
 
type Repo = {
  name: string
  stargazers_count: number
}
 
export const getServerSideProps: GetServerSideProps<{
  repo: Repo
}> = async () => {
  const res = await fetch('https://api.github.com/repos/vercel/next.js')
  const repo = await res.json()
  return { props: { repo } }
}
 
export default function Page({
  repo,
}: InferGetServerSidePropsType<typeof getServerSideProps>) {
  return repo.stargazers_count
}

Error:

./app/page.tsx
ReactServerComponentsError:

"getServerSideProps" is not supported in app/. Read more: https://nextjs.org/docs/app/building-your-application/data-fetching

Unfortunately, it refers to data-fetching documentation, which contains the example that led me to this error.

Steps to reproduce:

1. Create the app:

   npx create-next-app@latest

   (TypeScript: yes, AppRouter: yes, src-directory: no)

2. Change the pages.tsx into the variant above from the Docs.

package.json:

  "scripts": {
    "dev": "next dev -p 8002",
    "build": "next build",
    "start": "next start -p 8002",
    "lint": "next lint"
  },
  "dependencies": {
    "@types/node": "20.4.2",
    "@types/react": "18.2.15",
    "@types/react-dom": "18.2.7",
    "autoprefixer": "10.4.14",
    "eslint": "8.45.0",
    "eslint-config-next": "13.4.10",
    "eslint-config-prettier": "^8.8.0",
    "eslint-plugin-prettier": "^5.0.0",
    "next": "13.4.10",
    "postcss": "8.4.26",
    "prettier": "^3.0.0",
    "react": "18.2.0",
    "react-dom": "18.2.0",
    "tailwindcss": "3.3.3",
    "typescript": "5.1.6"
  },
  "devDependencies": {
    "@typescript-eslint/eslint-plugin": "^6.1.0"
  }

How to deal with that and how to use getServerSideProps with AppRouter?

Answer 1

You can't use getServerSideProps if you're using the app router. Please check this documentation to see how you can fetch the data with components in app directory.

https://nextjs.org/docs/app/building-your-application/data-fetching/fetching

Answer 2

In order to use getServerSideProps, your component needs to be in the /pages directory. I changed the structure of your example like so and got it working:

my-app/
├─ node_modules/
├─ app/
│  ├─ globals.css
│  ├─ layout.tsx
├─ .gitignore
├─ package.json
├─ README.md
├─ pages/
│  ├─ index.tsx

Moving your code there will solve your issue. This is because components in the /pages directory are treated specially. You can read more here, but in short, next automatically handles routing based on the pages directory and executes server-side logic before returning your page. Doing so in a non-page component would not work since those are provided after the page load (e.g. not server-side rendered)