getServerSideProps and state management

[Enitoni]

Hi. I've been using Next.js a lot recently and have been enjoying just how much easier it makes dealing with SEO and other server side related pains.

I am however confused on what the best way to handle state management is supposed to be though. I've found myself always relying on getInitialProps which feels weird as according to your documentation it's recommended to use getServerSideProps instead.

The problem with getServerSideProps however is that it issues a request to the server each time, whilst with getInitialProps it runs on the client and can thus re-use data that was fetched before.

Let's say you have a post, with a user. The page for a post fetches the post by its id, and this is stored in a Redux or MobX (whatever you use) store with getInitialProps. Then, a link on the page directs you to the page for that user, which given proper state management, will load instantly because the user was fetched along with the post.

But you can't do this with getServerSideProps, as it runs on the server and said data will not be "cached" on the server (it shouldn't be, either). This means that navigating to data that is in theory already fetched and available still has a delay (the request to the server), which is undesirable in a lot of cases where UX can be improved by avoiding such delays (especially on a bad connection).

I just don't understand how to deal with this, because since getInitialProps is "discouraged" and also doesn't allow for elegant handling of redirects and 404 (you have to implement it yourself with helper functions), it feels wrong to use it even though in my case it's the most logical thing to use. I have a site already running in production that uses only getInitialProps and it works flawlessly, but it feels like I'm not using Next.js as intended.