react-router

What is react-router?

The react-router npm package is a declarative routing library for React, allowing you to add navigation functionality to your React applications. It enables you to handle URL routing, match routes to your React components, and manage navigation state in a single-page application (SPA) environment.

What are react-router's main functionalities?

Basic Routing

This code demonstrates how to set up basic routing in a React application using react-router. It includes navigation links and route components that render different components based on the URL path.

import { BrowserRouter as Router, Route, Link } from 'react-router-dom';

function App() {
  return (
    <Router>
      <div>
        <nav>
          <ul>
            <li>
              <Link to='/'>Home</Link>
            </li>
            <li>
              <Link to='/about'>About</Link>
            </li>
          </ul>
        </nav>

        <Route exact path='/' component={Home} />
        <Route path='/about' component={About} />
      </div>
    </Router>
  );
}

function Home() {
  return <h2>Home</h2>;
}

function About() {
  return <h2>About</h2>;
}

Dynamic Routing

This code snippet shows how to implement dynamic routing with path parameters. The User component will render with the appropriate user ID based on the URL.

import { BrowserRouter as Router, Route, Link } from 'react-router-dom';

function App() {
  return (
    <Router>
      <div>
        <ul>
          <li>
            <Link to='/users/1'>User 1</Link>
          </li>
          <li>
            <Link to='/users/2'>User 2</Link>
          </li>
        </ul>

        <Route path='/users/:id' component={User} />
      </div>
    </Router>
  );
}

function User({ match }) {
  return <h2>User ID: {match.params.id}</h2>;
}

Nested Routing

Nested routing allows you to create routes within routes. This example shows a Layout component with a nested Dashboard route.

import { BrowserRouter as Router, Route, Link, Switch } from 'react-router-dom';

function App() {
  return (
    <Router>
      <Route path='/' component={Layout} />
    </Router>
  );
}

function Layout({ match }) {
  return (
    <div>
      <nav>
        <Link to={`${match.url}dashboard`}>Dashboard</Link>
      </nav>
      <Switch>
        <Route path={`${match.path}dashboard`} component={Dashboard} />
      </Switch>
    </div>
  );
}

function Dashboard() {
  return <h2>Dashboard</h2>;
}

Protected Routes

Protected routes are used to restrict access to certain parts of your application. This example shows a route that renders a component only if the user is authenticated, otherwise it redirects to a login page.

import { BrowserRouter as Router, Route, Redirect } from 'react-router-dom';

function App() {
  return (
    <Router>
      <Route path='/protected' render={() => (
        isAuthenticated() ? (
          <ProtectedComponent />
        ) : (
          <Redirect to='/login' />
        )
      )} />
    </Router>
  );
}

function isAuthenticated() {
  // Authentication logic here
  return true;
}

function ProtectedComponent() {
  return <h2>Protected</h2>;
}

Other packages similar to react-router

vue-router

Vue-router is the official router for Vue.js. It provides similar functionalities for Vue applications as react-router does for React applications, including nested routes, dynamic segments, and navigation guards. However, it is designed to work seamlessly with Vue's reactivity system.

reach-router

Reach Router is another routing library for React, which aims to be more accessible and simpler to use than react-router. It has a smaller API surface area and focuses on accessibility by managing focus after route transitions. However, as of my knowledge cutoff in 2023, Reach Router has been officially merged with React Router, and its features have been integrated into React Router v6.

README

React Router

The react-router package is the heart of React Router and provides all the core functionality for both react-router-dom and react-router-native.

If you're using React Router, you should never import anything directly from the react-router package, but you should have everything you need in either react-router-dom or react-router-native. Both of those packages re-export everything from react-router.

If you'd like to extend React Router and you know what you're doing, you should add react-router as a peer dependency, not a regular dependency in your package.

Changelog

v6.23.0

Date: 2024-04-23

What's Changed

Data Strategy (unstable)

The new unstable_dataStrategy API is a low-level API designed for advanced use-cases where you need to take control over the data strategy for your loader/action functions. The default implementation is today's behavior, to fetch all loaders in parallel, but this option allows users to implement more advanced data flows including Remix "Single Fetch", user-land middleware/context APIs, automatic loader caching, and more. Please see the docs for more information.

Note: This is a low-level API intended for advanced use-cases. This overrides React Router's internal handling of loader/action execution, and if done incorrectly will break your app code. Please use with caution and perform the appropriate testing.

Skip Action Error Revalidation (unstable)

Currently, all active loader's revalidate after any action submission, regardless of the action result. However, in the majority of cases a 4xx/5xx response from an action means that no data was actually changed and the revalidation is unnecessary. We've introduced a new future.unstable_skipActionErrorRevalidation flag that changes the behavior here, and we plan to make this the default in future version of React Router.

With this flag enabled, action's that return/throw a 4xx/5xx response status will no longer automatically revalidate. If you need to revalidate after a 4xx/5xx result with this flag enabled, you can still do that via returning true from shouldRevalidate - which now also receives a new unstable_actionStatus argument alongside actionResult so you can make decision based on the status of the action response without having to encode it into the action data.

Minor Changes

• Add a new unstable_dataStrategy configuration option (#11098, #11377)
• @remix-run/router - Add a new future.unstable_skipActionRevalidation future flag (#11098)
• @remix-run/router - SSR: Added a new skipLoaderErrorBubbling options to the staticHandler.query method to disable error bubbling by the static handler for use in Remix's Single Fetch implementation (#11098, (#11377))

Full Changelog: v6.22.3...v6.23.0