Internationalization with Angular Universal

Question

I'm trying to publish my website in different languages and am following the official Angular guide to localization (https://angular.io/guide/i18n).

However, when I build the project and serve it, I get the error Failed to lookup view "index" in views directory "C:\PATH_TO_PROJECT\dist\browser". This is because the dist/browser directory has now been split up into the different languages. How do I configure the server to serve each language? Angular does give instructions on how to configure Nginx and Apache servers, but I couldn't find any instructions for Angular Universal.

server.ts

/***************************************************************************************************
 * Load `$localize` onto the global scope - used if i18n tags appear in Angular templates.
 */
import '@angular/localize/init';
// Polyfills required for Firebase
import 'globalthis/auto';
(global as any).WebSocket = require('ws');
(global as any).XMLHttpRequest = require('xhr2');

import 'zone.js/dist/zone-node';

import { ngExpressEngine } from '@nguniversal/express-engine';
import * as express from 'express';
import * as compression from 'compression';
import { join } from 'path';

import { AppServerModule } from './src/main.server';
import { APP_BASE_HREF } from '@angular/common';
import { existsSync } from 'fs';
import { LOCALE_ID } from '@angular/core';

const domino = require('domino');

// The Express app is exported so that it can be used by serverless Functions.
export function app(lang: string): express.Express {
  const server = express();

  const distFolder = join(process.cwd(), `dist/browser${lang}`);
  const indexHtml = existsSync(join(distFolder, 'index.original.html')) ? 'index.original.html' : 'index';
  const win = domino.createWindow(indexHtml);

  global['window'] = win;
  global['document'] = win.document;

  server.use(express.json());

  // Our Universal express-engine (found @ https://github.com/angular/universal/tree/master/modules/express-engine)
  server.engine('html', ngExpressEngine({
    bootstrap: AppServerModule,
  }));

  server.set('view engine', 'html');
  server.set('views', distFolder);

  // Serve static files from /browser
  server.get('*.*', express.static(distFolder, {
    maxAge: '1y'
  }));

  // All regular routes use the Universal engine
  server.get('*', (req, res) => {
    res.render(indexHtml, { req, providers: [{ provide: APP_BASE_HREF, useValue: req.baseUrl }, { provide: LOCALE_ID, useValue: lang }] });
  });

  return server;
}

function run(): void {
  const port = process.env.PORT || 4200;

  // Start up the Node server
  const appEn = app('en');
  const appFr = app('fr');
  const appDe = app('de');

  const server = express();
  server.use('', appEn);
  server.use('/en', appEn);
  server.use('/fr', appFr);
  server.use('/de', appDe);
  server.listen(port, () => {
    console.log(`Node Express server listening on http://localhost:${port}`);
  });
}

// Webpack will replace 'require' with '__webpack_require__'
// '__non_webpack_require__' is a proxy to Node 'require'
// The below code is to ensure that the server is run only when not requiring the bundle.
declare const __non_webpack_require__: NodeRequire;
const mainModule = __non_webpack_require__.main;
const moduleFilename = mainModule && mainModule.filename || '';
if (moduleFilename === __filename || moduleFilename.includes('iisnode')) {
  run();
}

export * from './src/main.server';

I am also having trouble prerendering the app. I get the error An unhandled exception occurred: Could not find the main bundle: C:\PATH_TO_PROJECT\dist\server\en-US\main.js

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

I ended up using a proxy which I called server.run.js which would route the user to the correct url.