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

v7.5.1

Date: 2025-04-17

Patch Changes

• react-router - When using the object-based route.lazy API, the HydrateFallback and hydrateFallbackElement properties are now skipped when lazy loading routes after hydration (#13376)

  • If you move the code for these properties into a separate file, since the hydrate properties were unused already (if the route wasn't present during hydration), you can avoid downloading them at all. For example:

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

• react-router - Fix single fetch bug where no revalidation request would be made when navigating upwards to a reused parent route (#13253)

• react-router - Properly revalidate pre-rendered paths when param values change when using ssr:false + prerender configs (#13380)

• react-router - Fix pre-rendering when a loader returns a redirect (#13365)

• react-router - Do not automatically add null to staticHandler.query() context.loaderData if routes do not have loaders (#13223)

  • This was a Remix v2 implementation detail inadvertently left in for React Router v7
  • Now that we allow returning undefined from loaders, our prior check of loaderData[routeId] !== undefined was no longer sufficient and was changed to a routeId in loaderData check - these null values can cause issues for this new check
  • ⚠️ This could be a "breaking bug fix" for you if you are doing manual SSR with createStaticHandler()/<StaticRouterProvider>, and using context.loaderData to control <RouterProvider> hydration behavior on the client

Unstable Changes

⚠️ Unstable features are not recommended for production use

• react-router - Add better error messaging when getLoadContext is not updated to return a Map (#13242)
• react-router - Update context type for LoaderFunctionArgs/ActionFunctionArgs when middleware is enabled (#13381)
• react-router - Add a new unstable_runClientMiddleware argument to dataStrategy to enable middleware execution in custom dataStrategy implementations (#13395)
• react-router - Add support for the new unstable_shouldCallHandler/unstable_shouldRevalidateArgs APIs in dataStrategy (#13253)

Full Changelog: v7.5.0...v7.5.1