Create a Next.js app with Cloud Firestore and Material UI

About this guide

This development guide walks you through everything you need to do to build a high-quality Next.js app integrated with Cloud Firestore and Material UI. Check out the tasks below to get started. To save time, you can also use our boilerplate, which gives you a complete React codebase with all of these tasks done for you. Okay, let's dive in!

Tasks

• Setup your Next.js appGet the code

  Create a Next.js app using npx create-next-app and then run your project locally with the npm run dev command.

• Create Cloud Firestore query hooksGet the code

  Create React hooks that wrap your Cloud Firestore queries, such as useUser, useItem, and useItemsByUser. These hooks should subscribe to data using onSnapshot and return a query status of "success", "loading", or "error". The React Query library makes it especially easy to setup these hooks and have components re-render when data changes.

• Add Firestore rulesGet the code

  Be sure to specify your Firestore security rules so that your Firestore database is secure. For example, if you have a users collection you might ensure that the authenticated user can only update a doc if userDoc.uid matches their uid. If you have an items collection you might ensure that they can only update and fetch items where itemDoc.owner matches their uid. You'll also generally want to specify an array of fields that are writeable, as you wouldn't want a user to be able to change userDoc.planId without actually upgrading their plan.

• Build a data-driven UIGet the code

  Create a data-driven UI using Material UI components that reads/writes data to Cloud Firestore. The specifics will depend on the type of app you're building, but we generally recommend having a useItemsByOwner hook that fetches "items" in Cloud Firestore that are owned by the current user. You can then create a component for displaying that data in a simple list or table if more columns are needed. Finally, you'll want create a flow for creating and updating items utilizing Material UI modal and form components.

• Server render Material UI styles with Next.jsGet the code

  You'll need to server-render your Material UI styles to avoid a flash of unstyled content before your client-side javascript loads. To do this you'll need to update your Next.js Document component to extract component styles. After mount you'll then remove the server stylesheet so that the client can take over with style management.

• Ensure Material UI link components hook into Next.js routingGet the code

  Make all Material UI link components hook into Next.js routing by wrapping them with the Link component from next/link and setting passHref to true.

• Create a persistent layoutGet the code

  Add any components that you'd like displayed across all pages (such asNavbar and Footer) to your Next.js App component. If you need multiple persistent layouts you can instead have each page define its own layout. In that case, create multiple layout components (such as LandingPageLayout and AdminLayout) and wrap the contents of each page.

• Add a Material UI ThemeProviderGet the code

  Add the Material UI ThemeProvider component so that you customize theme values. If your entire app uses the same theme (as opposed to different nested themes), then the best way to do this is update your Next.js App component so that ThemeProviderwraps all your pages.

• Add dark mode supportGet the code

  To support dark mode you'll need to define a light and dark Material UI theme object, read the user's preference from local storage on mount, fall back to their browser default using prefers-color-scheme, and pass the correct theme object to ThemeProvider. You'll also want to create a useDarkMode React hook that any component can call to get/toggle the user's preference. Be sure to check out our example Material UI components with dark mode toggle.

• ‍Finish your app UI with Material UIGet the code

  Build out the rest of your UI using Material UI components and composing them into high-level page sections, such as HeroSection and AccountSettings. Use Material UI's CSS-in-JS solution for styling your components and overriding default component styles. You should find our library of pre-built Material UI components to be helpful.

Get the code

You can get the code for this guide with our Next.js, Cloud Firestore, and Material UI Boilerplate. You'll get a complete Next.js codebase with Cloud Firestore and Material UI integration, all the tasks listed above done for you, and a responsive multi-page template. It should save you about two weeks of development time.

Get the boilerplate