My Gita web app backend data service (not mine) is not working

This post is about my Gita web app deployed on Vercel. .... My post on Gita web app.

Jump to Resetting app to regular functionality

======================================

Related ChatGPT (CG) chat: Gita app sitedown, on 30 Nov. 2025

On 30 Nov. 2025, I found that the Gita app's backend data service - https://gql.bhagavadgita.io/graphql - provided by somebody else, and so not in my control, is not working. 

So the app showed a "Sorry! Something went wrong!" message with following technical details (To get the specific message, on 1 Dec. 2025, I re-ran the last deployment before I made changes for this issue: gita-jyk0kl1h5-ravi-s-iyers-projects.vercel.app deployed on 7 Sept. 2024) :
  • Details: An error occurred in the Server Components render. The specific message is omitted in production builds to avoid leaking sensitive details. A digest property is included on this error instance which may provide additional details about the nature of the error.
I updated the app to have a suitable error message about backend not being available. But that update was not straightforward as covered below.

Initially, I simply updated the Readme of the project to reflect the above issue, commiting the change and pushed it to GitHub. That triggered an automatic deployment on Vercel which failed. The error was at the stage of generating static pages (which needs backend data service).

As a starting step, I wanted to disable the automatic deployment/build being triggered. https://vercel.com/docs/project-configuration/git-settings#ignored-build-step
indicates that if I choose Don't build anything (instead of default Automatic) for Ignored Build Step, then repo update will not trigger a build and attempted deployment.

I changed the setting to Don't build anything and saved it.
It saved it but gave some warning: "Configuration Settings in the current Production deployment differ from your current Project Settings."
...

Me: In Next.js, is there a way to disable static page generation for a build
...

Me: Can I use:
export const dynamic = "force-dynamic";
if app/layout.tsx to disable it for all pages.

You see, my backend data service is not working. So while I have put up a suitable message in the home page and removed all navigation links, the build process fails due to static page generation. So I want to disable it for the whole app.
...

[I created a new branch - sitedown - for this change.]

That worked on local dev project. 
Next I did a local build - npm run build, followed by npm run start to test it.

Me: Tailwind classes are not coming into play on running the build app; Also image size is too big

[CG gave some suggestions but that did not work out.]

I then heavily edited app\page.tsx - images, chapter summary and tiles components (which will invoke backend) etc. were commented out. At some stage, I tried a build with such code calling backend in page commented out but without disabling static generation at app\_layout.tsx . That build failed as it still tried to generate static pages having code calling backend. So looks like the build may go simply by directory and files structure rather than guess which files will come into play based on code.

I also had to comment out Navbar component in app\layout.tsx.

On local build, Tailwind classes were not being recognized. But later on Vercel build, the Tailwind classes were being recognized. I don't know why local build did not recognize them. Note that on local dev, the Tailwind classes were being recognized.

So I modified the message content style and tags so that local build shows the message in a decent format.

Next I committed changes to the sitedown branch and pushed them to remote GitHub repo with -u flag to set the upstream.

Now I wanted this sitedown branch to be used as production branch on Vercel so that the https://gita-rsi.vercel.app/ link will show latest sitedown branch content (if deployment is successful).
On Vercel, Project Settings -> Environments -> Production enabled me to do that.


I had to trigger a redeploy of sitedown latest deployment as it had got triggered automatically but cancelled due to above setting being don't build anything. That deployment was successful and the production link of https://gita-rsi.vercel.app/ showed the output as per the latest commit to sitedown branch.

....

After interaction with a friend, I visited Vercel usage page and found that this Gita web app had 100K "Edge requests" for last year, which ChatGPT said for my Next.js app with default SSG, would be 10K unique page views at a conservative estimate. I am very surprised by this. I had thought that the web app would be getting visited rarely. Of course, 10K views for a year is not a big number but I thought it would be more like 100 views for a year! 
Country/region wise, USA is almost the whole (99 %) of this 100K Edge requests with India being very distant second (0.5%).
...

About the backend data service down issue being possibly a transient one - I hope that is the case.
But I have my doubts. The same group, https://github.com/gita , that published the backend graphql repo, https://github.com/gita/bhagavad-gita-graphql , and its deployed URL, also have a frontend listed in the backend readme, https://bhagavadgita.io/ , which IFIRC was using the same graphql backend data setup/structure. That frontend is still working. 

But the group has quite a few frontend and backend Bhagavad Gita repos. It also has REST API repo which seems to be working but may have limited data.

The graphql backend was awesome in the data it had. It had an array of commentators and translators in English and Hindi. So my app was able to provide all that data to users. I think a typical Gita REST API has much more limited data.

To conclude, I think having such a free data service (array of commentators & translators) was too good to last.

But I hope my doubts are proved to be wrong and that it is only a transient problem.
----------

If and when I get the time, I will figure out whether I can get the app to detect whether backend is up or down, and show the functional app or site down message as appropriate. Perhaps now that I have disable static pages generation across the whole app, it may not be so difficult to do, even if that will mean a slow app as static pages will not be available.

Resetting app to regular functionality 

If the backend data service does start working again and, for some reason, I am not able to reset the deployed app to regular fuctionality, then any Next.js developer can clone the Open Source (MIT license) GitHub repo of this app - https://github.com/ravisiyer/gita - and deploy its main branch as production site on Vercel or some other host. This deployed app should have same functionality as earlier (before this issue).

I have made only a Readme document change in main branch to mention this issue. After this issue was encountered, I have not changed any code in it. All code changes have been made only to sitedown branch.

When logged into Vercel, I can run the last deployment before I made changes for this issue: gita-jyk0kl1h5-ravi-s-iyers-projects.vercel.app deployed on 7 Sept. 2024. But for others, this URL may not work. I don't know whether for free-tier, Vercel has a feature of publishing an old deployment as an alternate production url.

Comments

Post a Comment