Design Pattern Question Rest APIs vs Server Actions (Next.js App Router)

Just to preface, we build the Taro webapp using Next.js, but we don't use server actions. Not that it was intentional, it just ended up working out that way. It was experimental with the Next.js version that we were using. I haven't personally used server actions before, so it might be useful to get some input from someone else that has used them before, too.

What would be the best course of action here, I found a library that can be used to run server action in parallel While I was reading somewhere that one should not use server actions for GET requests and only for mutations

Once again, I've only read about server actions. It sounds like they should only be used for mutating data. I am really hesitant about using libraries in a way that they weren't meant to be used.

If I was building a new webapp, I would probably still use a REST API (at least for an enterprise app) because it's tried and true:

• There's a whole standard for how to design REST endpoint urls.
• Most logging, monitoring, and observability services are built for REST APIs.
• Having a separate backend API enforces the concept of having separation of concerns.
• It's easier to open up your API to other consumers in the future (mobile app or third party developers)

one should follow one pattern in a codebase so that it stays consistent. Would appreciate the help or any kind of advice here.

You can try to use the library to allow data fetching to keep everything consistent but just know that there are tradeoffs. It just seems very "code-smelly" to be using a hack to get server actions to work in a way that it wasn't meant to work. You might be able to get it to work now, but it's always hard to tell whether this will cascade into more hacks in the future. And, it makes it harder to migrate off of in the future.

I think if your app is going to remain lightweight for the future, you can go with the server action path. At least you'll know if you go down this path, it will be easier to migrate later if you need to. But, if you're expecting to build a platform for many clients in the future, it might be worth it to go the REST API route now.