I have set up and used successfully Angular5 + SSR. It is still pretty nice.
All components work well on SSR and Non-SSR. And there are some services which call external HTTP get APIs to get some data. Of course, it works well on a Non-SSR mode.
But, the problem is that on SSR, the node server does not support to fetch and render the data. I can only see the fetched data after client-side fetching and rendering.
import {Injectable} from '@angular/core';
import { HttpClient, HttpHeaders } from '@angular/common/http';
import 'rxjs/add/operator/map';
import {Observable} from "rxjs";
const httpOptions = {
    headers: new HttpHeaders({ 'Content-Type': 'application/json' })
};
@Injectable()
export class BannerService {
    constructor(public http: HttpClient){
        console.log('SmsService Initialized...');
    }
    getBanners(){
        return this.http.get(BASE_API_URL + '/getData', httpOptions);
    }
}
home.component.ts
import {Component, OnDestroy, OnInit} from '@angular/core';
import { Router } from "@angular/router";
import {Subscription} from "rxjs/Subscription";
import {BannerService} from "../../services/banner.service";
@Component({
    selector: 'app-home',
    styleUrls: ['home.container.css'],
    templateUrl: 'home.container.html'
})
export class HomeContainerComponent implements OnInit, OnDestroy {
    public horizontalBannerList1;
    public horizontalBannerList2;
    public verticalBannerList;
    private bannerList;
    constructor( private router: Router, private bannerService: BannerService){
         ...
    }
    ngOnInit() {
        this.initBannerList();
    }
    ngOnDestroy() {
       ...
    }
    initBannerList(){
        if(this.bannerList){
            return;
        }
        this.bannerService.getBanners().subscribe(
            result => {
                console.log("bannerList result : ", result);
                this.bannerList = result;    
            },
            error => {
                console.error("bannerList error: ", error);
            },
            () => {
                console.log("bannerList completed");
            });
    }
}
I expected that on SSR the node server calls HTTP request data and render it on index.html but it's not...
Am I missing or misunderstood?
ps : The same issues are reported. https://github.com/angular/universal/issues/674 If I solve these issues or find out the good doc, I would update it again. :)
 
    