ReferenceError: document is not defined in Next.js while working with React Aria overlays

Question

I'm learning Next.js for web development and I came across commerce, a boilerplate for e-commerce websites written in Next.js. As I was browsing through the code I found the Sidebar component which uses React Aria for creating overlays.

I wanted to use this part in my own project, so wrote a Overlay component that also uses the OverlayContainer component.

import { useRef } from 'react';

import {
    useOverlay,
    useModal,
    OverlayContainer
} from '@react-aria/overlays';

const Overlay = ({ className, children, open = false, onClose }) => {
    const ref = useRef(null);

    const { modalProps } = useModal();

    let { overlayProps } = useOverlay({ onClose: onClose, open: open, isDismissable: true }, ref);
    return (
        <OverlayContainer>
            <div
                {...overlayProps}
                {...modalProps}
                ref={ref}
            >
                {children}
            </div>
        </OverlayContainer>

    );
};

export default Overlay;

This component gets loaded in my Layout component, just as in the commerce project. However, when I try to load up the index page, it gives me the following error:

Server Error
ReferenceError: document is not defined

This error happened while generating the page. Any console logs will be displayed in the terminal window.
Source
pages/_document.tsx (90:33) @ Function.getInitialProps

  88 |     }
  89 | 
> 90 |     const { html, head } = await ctx.renderPage({ enhanceApp })
     |                                 ^
  91 |     const styles = [...flush()]
  92 |     return { html, head, styles }
  93 |   }

When I remove the OverlayContainer component, it loads all fine. I tried updating my dependencies, comparing more code to the Github repo, but nothing found so far.

What's the problem here? And how could I fix it? I'm using Next 10 with React 17.0.1.

Answer 1

A workaround that you can do is isBrowser which is fairly common for NextJS apps.

const isBrowser = typeof window !== "undefined";

Use it to conditionally render your OverlayContainer.

import { useRef } from "react";

import { useOverlay, useModal, OverlayContainer } from "@react-aria/overlays";

/**
 * Utility to detect if you're on the server, or in the browser.
 */
const isBrowser = typeof window !== "undefined";

const Overlay = ({ className, children, open = false, onClose }) => {
  const ref = useRef(null);

  const { modalProps } = useModal();

  let { overlayProps } = useOverlay(
    { onClose: onClose, open: open, isDismissable: true },
    ref
  );
  return isBrowser ? (
    <OverlayContainer>
      <div {...overlayProps} {...modalProps} ref={ref}>
        {children}
      </div>
    </OverlayContainer>
  ) : null;
};

export default Overlay;

Answer 2

This happened because Next JS has server-side rendering. When you are using server-side rendering there is no browser. Hence, there is not any variable window or document. Hence this error shows up.