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Today we're previewing a feature for Netlify that I'm SOOOO thrilled about finally sharing, Edge Handlers! It's a game-changer for application development, I'll explain why:
The way that we typically work with a Jamstack app is that we prebuild as much as possible, and deploy it to Edge nodes globally (CDN). This allows us to handle as much work upfront, which has a lot of performance benefits- latency is decreased due to geo-redundancy
This works wonderfully and I have drunk the koolaid on this approach because I've seen its benefits in practice. But one piece of scrutiny it can suffer is this:
What happens if you need to change a load of content on the fly based on a user's needs? The API economy affords rich experiences like commenting through PubNub and that type of API, but there are some cases that are challenging in this model such as auth and personalization
Enter Edge Handlers! With Edge Handlers you aren't calling out to another origin like in these other models. You are literally updating content on the fly, at the Edge, which is a perfect enhancement/addition/companion to Jamstack!
Why am I so excited for this at Netlify? Because our team, the Developer Experience team, is working hand in hand with the Edge Handlers team to make sure the DX of this feature will be top-notch, so that application devs can use the tools they know and love to work with it!
Super huge shout out to @calavera, @mraerino, @shortdiv and all the folks working hard on this feature so far! It will be in beta in the coming months.
