Difference between client side and server side rendering

Question

What's the difference between client-side rendering and server-side rendering. They sound kind of similar. I did a webinar and the dev there was saying do this for client-side and this for server-side. Is there any difference between the two?

Answer 1

Well, client side means that the server sends some structured data to the client (for example a json file that has some properties) and the client renders that data (lets say it generates a image that contains a pie chart) and then displays the data to the user.

Server side means that the final output (the image) is generated by the server and then the image is send to the client.

For server-side rendering your hardware requirements will grow along with the number of concurent users, because the server will render images for each user. Ok... maybe you can have a cache... but you get the point.

For client-side rendering, your hardware requirements will be much lower, since all the processing is made by the client.

In my particular case, I have an app that can display a dashboard (with pie-charts, columns etc.). The server just sends the data and the client (the browser) using google charts, creates all the graphical layout (so, I am using client side rendering).

If I were to use server-side, then the server would generate some jpg files, for each connected client and then send the files to the client (browser).