piconav

What is piconav?

piconav is a tiny library that keeps the browser URL in sync with your JS state for Single Page Applications.

It also syncs the document title, canonical URL and meta description.

It aims to allow Google indexing of SPA's to prevent the need for server side rendering / hydrating.

Why did you make piconav?

• As a fast way to add SPA URL navigation to my prototypes.

  • React Router seems complicated and the API changes often.
  • I do not like the idea of using non-display JSX elements to add meta data to nodes (as React Router does with Route).

• Clear API.

  • The standard browser APIs around single page navigation are not very clear so I created picnoav to document their usage.
  • The document title, canonical URL and meta description are outside the control of the JSX DOM so have to updated directly with the DOM API.

• SEO.

  • To document my experiments with Googlebot's indexing of SPA apps.
  • From experience I have found Google will index your JS pages if you load the data in a blocking script tag so there is no fetch latency after your initial JS loads.

Why should I use piconav?

• Easy to use.
  • Use piconav if you want to get something up and running quickly.
• Easy to replace.
  • Minimal API.
  • piconav is very simple.
  • You can copy or customize the functionality quickly.

How to add piconav to your JS project.

Install: yarn add piconav or npm install piconav.

1. Create a nav.js to add configuration and event handlers to piconav.

import {on, off} from "./../lib/piconav";
import {storeIns} from "./../stores/store";

const resetPrimaryScroll = () => {
    document.querySelector("html").scrollTo(0, 0);
};

const {nav, navByBrowser, updateDoc} = on({
    site: {
        canonicalDomain: `https://example.com`
    },
    events: {
        js: {
            after: ({data}) => {
                if (data !== null && "type" in data && data.type !== "home") {
                    resetPrimaryScroll();
                }
            }
        },
        browser: {
            after: (url, params) => {
                // You should update your store state to match the incoming `url` and `params`.
                return storeIns.onBrowserNav(url, params);
            }
        }
    }
});

export {
    nav,
    navByBrowser,
    updateDoc
}

2. Import nav.js to your store, map JS state to document state.

When the user navigates via browser:

• events.browser.after(url, params) is called.
  • Your code is expected to call updateDoc(navEvent) soon after.

When the user navigates via JS click:

• Call nav(navEvent)

Example using a MobX store:

@observable curUrl = null;

nav(appSpecificData, src = "js") {
    this.curUrl = {
        url: "/a/b/c",
        title: "A Title",
        metaDesc: "A page description",
        data: appSpecificData,
        src
    };
}

Note: src is either js or browser.

E.g If curUrl is set via the events.browser.after function, src will be "browser".

Using an observable to store curUrl property allows updating both the JSX DOM and document when state changes.

Updating document when curUrl changes:

const disposer = observe(storeIns, "curUrl", ({oldValue, newValue}) => {
    const {url, title, metaDesc, data, src} = newValue;

    const navEvent = {
        url,
        doc: {
            title,
            metaDesc
        },
        
        // This can be any object, and will be passed to `events.js.after` to allow custom logic.
        data
    };

    if (src === "js") {
        nav(navEvent);
        return;
    }

    if (src === "browser") {
        updateDoc(navEvent);
        return;
    }
});

Using observe on curUrl allows calling nav and updateDoc in a single place (instead of many call sites).

3. Run navByBrowser on initial page load.

This will call events.browser.after which will set your JS state to match the current URL.

This should be done preferably before you mount your JSX components so the first JSX render is your page content and not empty components.

This is important so the Googlebot snapshots and indexes the correct HTML.

navByBrowser();