next-router

A routing library for Next.js

Installation

npm install @nexum-ag/next-router

Introduction

This library is inspired by and works very similar than next-routes. It works with a custom server or with Next.js 9 file system routing.

Differences:

• Built with TypeScript
• Route configuration is provided as Object
• Url Hashes support
• withNextRouter HOC for custom app component (make current route available)
• useRouter hook
• Link and Router available as Singleton thru import { Link, Router } from '@nexum-ag/next-router';
• Router events with route information

TODO:

• Unnamed parameters (does it make sense? -> unnamed-parameters)
• Nested routes

How to

Define the routes

Create a file like routes.config.(ts|js) and paste the following:

import { Routes, init } from '@nexum-ag/next-router';

const routes: Routes = {
  'user': {
    pattern: '/user',
    page: '/user',
  },
  'home': {
    pattern: '/',
    page: '/index',
  }
};

init(routes);

We look at one route defininion:

'user': { // This is the route name
  pattern: '/user', // This is the url pattern to call the page
  page: '/user', // This is the next page (pages/user.js or pages/user/index.js)
},

The pattern can be anything that path-to-regexp understands. So a route with an optional parameter would be /user/:name? for example. path-to-regexp by the way is the same library that express is using for the routing.

Usage

Import the routes config file once in your application. (e.g. Custom App component)

You can use next-router Link component instead of the next/link.

import 'routes.config'; // import this only once and before using Link
import { Link } from '@nexum-ag/next-router';

// /user pattern
<Link route="user">
  <a>Got to User page</a>
</Link>

// /user/:name pattern
<Link route="user" params={{ name: 'stefan' }}>
  <a>Got to User detail page</a>
</Link>

withNextRouter HOC

If you use this HOC the query params and route information will be available in getInitialProps and useRouter hook.

// _app.tsx

import React from 'react';
import App from 'next/app';
import '../routes.config';
import { withNextRouter } from '@nexum-ag/next-router';

class MyApp extends App {
  render() {
    const { Component, pageProps } = this.props;
    return <Component {...pageProps} />;
  }
}

export default withNextRouter(MyApp);

// next page example

Page.getInitialProps = async ({ query }) => {
  // query contains the matched route params + get params
  return { query };
}

// useRouter hook example

import React from 'react';
import { useRouter } from '@nexum-ag/next-router';

const Component = props => {
  const { route, params, query } = useRouter();

  return (
    <>
      <h1>Route: {route}</h1>

      <p>params:</p>
      {JSON.stringify(params)}

      <p>query:</p>
      {JSON.stringify(query)}
    </>
  );
}

Custom Router/Link

You can pass a custom Router class, Link component or getRouterMatchFunction to the init function if you need to. They will be used instead of the built ins with import { Link, Router } from '@nexum-ag/next-router';.

import { Routes, init } from '@nexum-ag/next-router';

const routes: Routes = {
  ...
};

init(routes, YourRouterClass, YourLinkFactory, yourGetRouterMatchFunction);

Custom Server

If you use a custom server you can create more complex routes and are not limited by what you can do with Next.js default routing.

Disable file-system routing

// next.config.js

module.exports = {
 useFileSystemPublicRoutes: false,
}

// server.js

const express = require('express');
const next = require('next');

require('./routes.config');
const Router = require('@nexum-ag/next-router').Router;

const port = parseInt(process.env.PORT, 10) || 3000;
const dev = process.env.NODE_ENV !== 'production';
const app = next({ dev });
const handle = app.getRequestHandler();
const render = (req, res, page, params, query, route) => app.render(req, res, page, params);

app.prepare().then(() => {
 const server = express();
 
 server.use(Router.getRequestHandler(render));
 
 server.all('*', (req, res) => {
   return handle(req, res);
 })
 
 server.listen(port, err => {
   if (err) throw err
   console.log(`> Ready on http://localhost:${port}`);
 })
});

Router Events

You can use the same events you know from the original next/router. But instead of the url you get an object with the route information. (from type CurrentRoute)

import { Router } from '@nexum-ag/next-router';

const handleRouteChange = route => {
 console.log('App is changing to route: ', route);
};

Router.events.on('routeChangeStart', handleRouteChange);

License

next-router is MIT licensed.