react-motor 🏍

A React router for navigation between arbitrary states. You create a motor with a custom state-to-path encoder/decoder and use it to navigate around your application.

Contents

• Features
• Installation
• Usage
• Example
• More Examples

Features

• Synchronizes state with browser URL through the browser history
• Custom URL encoding/decoding logic defined in a single location
• Navigate to desired state with the navigate function
• Features a declarative Link component (<a> with href)
• Supports major browsers including IE11
• Written in TypeScript (type definitions included)
• Requires React 16.8 or higher with Hooks and Context API
• Functional, lightweight and zero dependencies

Installation

• NPM: npm install react-motor
• Yarn: yarn add react-motor

Usage

1. Call createMotor to build a motor with your stateToPath and pathToState functions.
2. Wrap your application with the returned MotorProvider.
3. Use the useMotor hook when you want to inspect state or navigate imperatively.
4. Render the Link component when you want to navigate declaratively.

Example

This example shows how to use motor to encode javascript objects into base64 url.

• State: { page: "post", id: 124 }
• Resulting url: http://yourapp/eyJwYWdlIjoicG9zdCIsImlkIjoxMjR9

Start with creating a motor with a json and base64 encoder:

import { createMotor, RedirectMotor, b64encode, b64decode } from "react-motor";

// Define an arbitrary state shape
const defaultState = { page: "home" };

// Define custom path encoding/decoding (e.g. json+base64)
const options = {
  stateToPath: state => b64encode(JSON.stringify(state)),
  pathToState: path => {
    if (path === "") {
      // Redirect to home on root url
      throw new RedirectMotor(defaultState);
    }

    try {
      return JSON.parse(b64decode(path));
    } catch (err) {
      return { page: "error" };
    }
  }
};

// Create motor objects
const { MotorProvider, useMotor, Link } = createMotor(defaultState, options);

Wrap your app contents with the MotorProvider:

import React from "react";

function App() {
  return (
    <MotorProvider>
      <AppContent />
    </MotorProvider>
  );
}

Use useMotor hook or Link component anywhere:

function Tabs() {
  const { state, navigate } = useMotor();

  const className = active => (active ? "tab active" : "tab");

  return (
    <div className="tabs">
      <div
        onClick={() => navigate({ page: "home" })}
        className={className(state.page === "home")}
        style={{ cursor: "pointer" }}
      >
        Home
      </div>

      <Link to={{ page: "library" }}>
        <div className={className(state.page === "library")}>Library</div>
      </Link>
    </div>
  );
}

More Examples

• Flat routing
• Base64 encoding
• Advanced routing and validation with typescript