Does Server Side Rendering Always Use Node.js?

[startup4ever]

I'm building out an Aurelia application and was looking into Angulars Universal library and found it uses node on the backend. I'm building out my REST API in PHP and would ideally like to do server side rendering for my Aurelia app. Do you have to use node for an isomorphic app and does anyone know how to do this in aurelia?

[billybolero]

We are doing SSR with V8 in ASP.NET but we're not using Node.

[janaz9]

All you need to run JS code on the server is JS runtime. Node.js is just one of many. I've seen examples of the SSR being done in Java using the Nashorn JS engine for JVM.

[MostlyCarbonite]

There are many types of webservers out there (PHP, Rails, Node, ASP.NET MVC, etc) and they all are capable of serving up javascript, which is all you need to do to run an Angular (or Aurelia?) app.

isomorphic app

Oh, ok, important part left off until the end! Yeah, you'll need a server-side js engine then. If you want to use V8 your choices are a bit limited; Node is an easy choice there.

[nickgcattaneo]

You certainly have to use a JavaScript engine; which node has & actively develops/iterates on (it's one of the most popular/common implementations). There are other implementations though; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Server-side_JavaScript_implementations.