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

v6.4.0

Date: 2022-09-13

What's Changed

Remix Data APIs

Whoa this is a big one! 6.4.0 brings all the data loading and mutation APIs over from Remix. Here's a quick high level overview, but it's recommended you go check out the docs, especially the feature overview and the tutorial.

New react-router APIs

• Create your router with createMemoryRouter
• Render your router with <RouterProvider>
• Load data with a Route loader and mutate with a Route action
• Handle errors with Route errorElement
• Defer non-critical data with defer and Await

New react-router-dom APIs

• Create your router with createBrowserRouter/createHashRouter
• Submit data with the new <Form> component
• Perform in-page data loads and mutations with useFetcher()
• Defer non-critical data with defer and Await
• Manage scroll position with <ScrollRestoration>
• Perform path-relative navigations with <Link relative="path"> (#9160)

Patch Changes

• Path resolution is now trailing slash agnostic (#8861)
• useLocation returns the scoped location inside a <Routes location> component (#9094)
• Respect the <Link replace> prop if it is defined (#8779)

Full Changelog: v6.3.0...v6.4.0