@helpfulhuman/redux-router

Redux-Router

This library is a state-only router that is designed specifically for use with Redux. It is built on top of Helpful Human's router-kit library.

Getting Started

Install via npm:

npm install --save @helpfulhuman/redux-router

Create Your Router

The createRouter() method is a factory for creating a new ReduxRouter instance that you can use to add your middleware. It should be noted that the ReduxRouter class extends the Router class provided by router-kit.

Note: You'll likely want to designate a file to your route configuration.

import { createRouter } from "@helpfulhuman/redux-router";

// create a router instance
var router = createRouter();

// add middleware that will be applied to all routes
router.use(function logger (ctx, next) {
  console.log("router -> " + ctx.location.href);
  next();
});

// add middleware that applies to a partial route name and redirects
// the user if the "token" value isn't set in their redux store
router.use("/account", function isLoggedIn (ctx, next) {
  if ( ! ctx.state.token) {
    next(null, "/login");
  } else {
    next();
  }
});

// add a handler that dispatches an action to redux
router.exact("/login", function (ctx, next) {
  ctx.dispatch({ type: "SET_VIEW", view: "login" });
});

// add a handler that dispatches actions based on route parameters
router.exact("/account/:page", function (ctx, next) {
  var page = ctx.params.page;
  if (page !== "profile" && page !== "billing") {
    return next(new Error("Page Not Found"));
  }

  ctx.dispatch({ type: "SET_VIEW", view: "account." + page });
});

// export the router to add it to your store
export default router;

The context Object

Field	Type	Description
getState	Function	Your Redux store's getState() method (in case you need the absolute most recent state).
dispatch	Function	Your Redux store's dispatch() method.
location	Object	The location object provided by history when routing is initialized.
params	Object	The parsed URI tokens for the route when a path with tokens has been provided for the middleware or route handler. Example: if you had a handler bound to /greet/:name and the route was /greet/world, then this value would be { name: "world" }.
query	Object	A parsed version of the query string for the route. An example would be ?foo=bar being converted to { foo: "bar" }.
state	Object	The state of your Redux store when the route is first invoked.
uri	String	The URI or location.pathname for the request.

Changing Route

Rather than invoking route changes on the router directly, this library does its best to plug in to the way that Redux handles state changes: via action creators. There are 3 different action creators available for pushing, replacing and popping state.

Note: Both pushState() and replaceState() support an object as an optional second argument. This is to be used with aliases, which will be explained in more detail later on.

import { pushState, replaceState, popState } from "@helpfulhuman/redux-router";

// push a new route onto the stack
store.dispatch(pushState("/example"));

// redirect to a new route by replacing the current route on the stack
store.dispatch(replaceState("/something/else"));

// go back to the previous route by popping the stack
store.dispatch(popState());

Using Aliases

Aliases allow you to work with a semantic route name as an abstraction over the actual route's URI. By not littering URIs throughout your code, you can reduce the risk of forming bad URIs or reduce the hastle often associating with having to refactor URIs.

Note: You can use tokens in the path that you're aliasing.

// add a named alias for routing to a specific task
router.alias("viewTask", "/tasks/:taskId");

// route to the aliased URI -> /tasks/1000
pushState("viewTask", { taskId: "1000" });

Connecting Your Router to redux

Once you've set up your routes, you can generate middleware for your Redux store with the .connectStore() method. This method can optionally take a custom history instance (if empty, one will be created for you) and returns the middleware for Redux.

import createHistory from "history/createBrowserHistory";
import { createStore, applyMiddleware } from "redux";
import router from "./router";

// this is optional
var history = createHistory();

var store = createStore(reducer, applyMiddleware(
  router.connectStore(history)
));