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 is the primary package in the React Router project.

Installation

npm i react-router

Changelog

v7.5.0

Date: 2025-04-04

What's Changed

route.lazy Object API

We've introduced a new route.lazy API which gives you more granular control over the lazy loading of route properties that you could not achieve with the route.lazy() function signature. This is useful for Framework mode and performance-critical library mode applications.

createBrowserRouter([
  {
    path: "/show/:showId",
    lazy: {
      loader: async () => (await import("./show.loader.js")).loader,
      action: async () => (await import("./show.action.js")).action,
      Component: async () => (await import("./show.component.js")).Component,
    },
  },
]);

⚠️ This is a breaking change if you have adopted the route.unstable_lazyMiddleware API which has been removed in favor of route.lazy.unstable_middleware. See the Unstable Changes section below for more information.

Minor Changes

• react-router - Add granular object-based API for route.lazy to support lazy loading of individual route properties (#13294)

Patch Changes

• @react-router/dev - Update optional wrangler peer dependency range to support wrangler v4 (#13258)
• @react-router/dev - Reinstate dependency optimization in the child compiler to fix depsOptimizer is required in dev mode errors when using vite-plugin-cloudflare and importing Node.js builtins (#13317)

Unstable Changes

⚠️ Unstable features are not recommended for production use

• react-router - Introduce future.unstable_subResourceIntegrity flag that enables generation of an importmap with integrity for the scripts that will be loaded by the browser (#13163)
• react-router - Remove support for the route.unstable_lazyMiddleware property (#13294)
  • In order to lazily load middleware, you can use the new object-based route.lazy.unstable_middleware API
• @react-router/dev - When future.unstable_viteEnvironmentApi is enabled, ensure critical CSS in development works when using a custom Vite base has been configured (#13305)

Changes by Package

• create-react-router
• react-router
• @react-router/architect
• @react-router/cloudflare
• @react-router/dev
• @react-router/express
• @react-router/fs-routes
• @react-router/node
• @react-router/remix-config-routes-adapter
• @react-router/serve

Full Changelog: v7.4.1...v7.5.0