Server & Client Service Compilation Docs

Issue

Question from the issue 120

A question came up about services for server/client and the following example of an error message:

Error: A server-side only service must have a client-side counterpart (while requireTransform was processing /<PATH>/app/components/<COMPONENT>/model.js) while parsing file: /<PATH>/app/components/<COMPONENT>/model.js

Explanation

The model.js is a isomorphic file; this means that the first request is handled by the server and the subsequent requests are handled by the client. So if we reference a file on the server we will expect to be able to do the same on the browser.

An example will be the Base64 encoding where a Nodejs server need to use the Buffer on the browser it will need to use the atob/btoa functions.

In our case if the model.js reference a services/server file on the server then we will expect to do the same thing on the browser but in compilation time we point to the services/client version of the file but sometimes these files work on both environments we put in the service/universal.

As a final example on the model.js, we can target directly to the database on the server but on the client, we need a different approach because we don't have the same ability as the server so we perform a request to obtain our data.

The error that originates this issue tell us that we have a reference to a services/server but doesn't have the services/client reference when compiled.