Client-side navigation and view transitions for Ecopages. Intercepts same-origin link clicks to provide smooth page transitions without full page reloads.

Features

Client-side navigation - Intercepts <a> clicks for fast navigation
Efficient DOM diffing - Uses morphdom to update only what changed, preserving scroll positions and internal state
State persistence - Elements with data-eco-persist are never recreated, preserving internal state
View Transitions - Optional integration with the View Transition API
Lifecycle events - Hook into navigation with eco:before-swap, eco:after-swap, eco:page-load

Compatibility

This package works with MPA-style rendering (KitaJS, Lit, vanilla JS) where the server returns full HTML pages.

Not compatible with React/Preact - These frameworks manage their own virtual DOM and component trees. Replacing the DOM breaks hydration, state, and event handlers. For React apps, use a framework-specific routing solution.

Component-level islands are a narrower case: small interactive roots emitted by another integration (for example a React island inside an otherwise MPA-style page) can work with @ecopages/browser-router, because ownership stays scoped to the island root instead of the full document.

Installation

bunx jsr add @ecopages/browser-router

Usage

Create and start the router in a global client-side script (e.g., src/layouts/base-layout.script.ts).

Important: Ensure the router script is injected in a consistent order within the <head> across all pages. Inconsistent ordering (e.g. script between styles on one page but after on another) causes morphdom to reload styles, leading to a "Flash of Unstyled Content" (FOUC).

import { createRouter } from '@ecopages/browser-router/client';

// Creates and starts the router with default options
const router = createRouter();

With custom options:

import { createRouter } from '@ecopages/browser-router/client';

const router = createRouter({
	viewTransitions: true,
	scrollBehavior: 'auto',
});

Configuration

Option	Type	Default	Description
`linkSelector`	`string`	`'a[href]'`	Selector for links to intercept
`persistAttribute`	`string`	`'data-eco-persist'`	Attribute to mark elements for DOM persistence
`reloadAttribute`	`string`	`'data-eco-reload'`	Attribute to force full page reload
`updateHistory`	`boolean`	`true`	Whether to update browser history
`scrollBehavior`	`'top' \| 'preserve' \| 'auto'`	`'top'`	Scroll behavior after navigation
`viewTransitions`	`boolean`	`false`	Use View Transition API for animations
`smoothScroll`	`boolean`	`false`	Use smooth scrolling during navigation

Persistence

Mark elements to preserve across navigations. These elements are never recreated during navigation, morphdom skips them entirely, preserving their internal state (event listeners, web component state, form values, etc.):

<!-- This counter keeps its state across all navigations -->
<radiant-counter data-eco-persist="counter"></radiant-counter>

Script Re-execution

To force a script to re-execute on every navigation (e.g. analytics, hydration), add data-eco-rerun and data-eco-script-id:

<script data-eco-rerun="true" data-eco-script-id="analytics">
	// This runs on every navigation
	trackPageview();
</script>

React islands with `@ecopages/browser-router`

When @ecopages/browser-router is used in an MPA-style app that also renders component-level React islands:

island hydration scripts may need to run again after eco:after-swap
hydration bootstraps should carry stable data-eco-script-id metadata
data-eco-rerun allows those bootstraps to be re-executed safely during head reconciliation

This note is specific to DOM-swapping navigation with @ecopages/browser-router. It does not apply to full React applications using @ecopages/react-router, where page routing and hydration are handled by the React router runtime itself.

Force Full Reload

Use data-eco-reload to force a full page reload:

<a href="/logout" data-eco-reload>Logout</a>

Events

Listen to navigation lifecycle events:

document.addEventListener('eco:before-swap', (e) => {
	console.log('Navigating to:', e.detail.url);
	// Call e.detail.reload() to abort and do full reload
});

document.addEventListener('eco:after-swap', (e) => {
	console.log('Swapped to:', e.detail.url);
});

document.addEventListener('eco:page-load', (e) => {
	console.log('Page loaded:', e.detail.url);
});

import { createRouter } from '@ecopages/browser-router/client';

const router = createRouter();

// Navigate with pushState
await router.navigate('/new-page');

// Navigate with replaceState
await router.navigate('/new-page', { replace: true });

Keywords

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Package last updated on 08 Mar 2026

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Install

@ecopages/browser-router