universal-router

Universal Router

A simple middleware-style router that can be used in both client-side and server-side applications.

Visit Quickstart Guide (slides)  |  Join #universal-router on Gitter to stay up to date

Features

• It has simple code with only single path-to-regexp dependency.
• It can be used with any JavaScript framework such as React, Vue, Hyperapp etc.
• It uses the same middleware approach used in Express and Koa, making it easy to learn.
• It supports both imperative and declarative routing style.
• Routes are plain JavaScript objects with which you can interact as you like.

What users say about Universal Router

Just switched a project over to universal-router. Love that the whole thing is a few hundred lines of flexible, easy-to-read code.

-- Tweet by Greg Hurrell from Facebook

It does a great job at trying to be universal — it's not tied to any framework, it can be run on both server and client, and it's not even tied to history. It's a great library which does one thing: routing.

-- Comment on Reddit by @everdimension

Installation

Using npm:

npm install universal-router --save

How does it look like?

import UniversalRouter from 'https://esm.sh/universal-router'

const routes = [
  {
    path: '', // optional
    action: () => `<h1>Home</h1>`,
  },
  {
    path: '/posts',
    action: () => console.log('checking child routes for /posts'),
    children: [
      {
        path: '', // optional, matches both "/posts" and "/posts/"
        action: () => `<h1>Posts</h1>`,
      },
      {
        path: '/:id',
        action: (context) => `<h1>Post #${context.params.id}</h1>`,
      },
    ],
  },
]

const router = new UniversalRouter(routes)

router.resolve('/posts').then((html) => {
  document.body.innerHTML = html // renders: <h1>Posts</h1>
})

Play with an example on JSFiddle, CodePen, JS Bin in your browser or try RunKit node.js playground.

Documentation

• Getting Started
• Universal Router API

Books and Tutorials

• 🎓 ES6 Training Course by Wes Bos
• 📗 You Don't Know JS: ES6 & Beyond by Kyle Simpson (Dec, 2015)
• 📄 You might not need React Router by Konstantin Tarkus
• 📄 An Introduction to the Redux-First Routing Model by Michael Sargent
• 📄 Getting Started with Relay Modern for Building Isomorphic Web Apps by Konstantin Tarkus

Browser Support

We support all ES5-compliant browsers, including Internet Explorer 9 and above, but depending on your target browsers you may need to include polyfills for Map, Promise and Object.assign before any other code.

For compatibility with older browsers you may also need to include polyfills for Array.isArray and Object.create.

Contributing

Anyone and everyone is welcome to contribute to this project. The best way to start is by checking our open issues, submit a bug report or feature request, participate in discussions, upvote or downvote the issues you like or dislike, send pull requests.

Support

• #universal-router on Gitter — Watch announcements, share ideas and feedback.
• GitHub Issues — Check open issues, send feature requests.
• @koistya on Codementor, HackHands or Skype — Private consulting.

Related Projects

• React Starter Kit — Boilerplate and tooling for building isomorphic web apps with React and Relay.
• Node.js API Starter Kit — Boilerplate and tooling for building data APIs with Docker, Node.js and GraphQL.
• ASP.NET Core Starter Kit — Cross-platform single-page application boilerplate (ASP.NET Core, React, Redux).
• Babel Starter Kit — Boilerplate for authoring JavaScript/React.js libraries.
• React App SDK — Create React apps with just a single dev dependency and zero configuration.
• React Static Boilerplate — Single-page application (SPA) starter kit (React, Redux, Webpack, Firebase).
• History — HTML5 History API wrapper library that handle navigation in single-page apps.
• Redux-First Routing — A minimal, framework-agnostic API for accomplishing Redux-first routing.

Sponsors

Become a sponsor and get your logo on our README on Github with a link to your site. [Become a sponsor]

Backers

Support us with a monthly donation and help us continue our activities. [Become a backer]

License

Copyright © 2015-present Kriasoft. This source code is licensed under the MIT license found in the LICENSE.txt file. The documentation to the project is licensed under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license.

Made with ♥ by Konstantin Tarkus (@koistya, blog), Vladimir Kutepov and contributors

Changelog

[10.0.0] - 2025-05-05

• Updated path-to-regexp from v6.2.0 to v8.2.0. See changelog (BREAKING CHANGE #218)
• Since Path To RegExp does not provide an ESM version, it is now bundled into the Universal Router package:

  - const pathToRegexp = require('path-to-regexp')
  + import * as pathToRegexp from 'universal-router/path-to-regexp'
  

• The import path for generating URLs has changed:

  - import generateUrls from 'universal-router/generateUrls'
  + import generateUrls from 'universal-router/generate-urls'