react-router-slim

Declarative browser routing for React Web Applications.

Routing rules are declared using Router and Route components.

Router

Router is a root component that declares a route dependent part of an application.

Router props:

• navigate - method for navigation between routers;
• match - method that matches current path with path argument and returns the result with matched params;
• changeEvent - name of an event that may change the current path. Router listens for this event and updates content when the event is fired;
• getCurrentPath - method for retrieving the current path;

Default implementation relies on the browser History API for the frontend routing, so default implementation of navigate is window.history.pushState or window.history.replaceState, changeEvent is popstate, and getCurrentPath returns window.location.pathname.

Default implementation of the match function uses the pathToRegexp function from the path-to-regexp library https://github.com/pillarjs/path-to-regexp. All rules for the path argument of pathToRegexp function work for the path prop value of a child Route component.

Router provides the RouterContext to children. RouterContext contains only two functions: match and navigate from the Router component. Match is usually used by child Route components. Navigate is used by children to trigger transitions between routes.

Route

Route is a child component of the Router that controls rendering of its children depending on the current router path.

Route props:

• path - path which Route renders children for;
• error - component that is rendered in case of any errors in route children;

Route provides the RouteContext to children. RouteContext properties are:

• path - current router path;
• params - template parameters of a route;
• matches - all path matches (may contains more than one in case of overlapped routes);
• error - error raised by one of children;

If Route's paths are overlapped then both are rendered.

The default browser history routing strategy can be replaced with custom routing strategy (hash, memory, etc.) via Router component props: match, navigate, changeEvent, getCurrentPath.

It does not provide server side routing. You can use the routing provided by your back-end API for this.

Examples

Our examples also demonstrate how to implement URL hash routing.

Simple

const App = () => <Router>
    <Route path="/(.*)">
        <Route path="path1">{child1}</Route>
        {/* "path2/:param" and "path2/(.*)" are overlapped, both are rendered */}
        {/* this component has params.param === ...rest of path... */}
        <Route path="path2/:param">{child21}</Route>
        {/* this component has params[0] === ...rest of path... */}
        <Route path="path2/(.*)">{child22}</Route>
        <Route path="path3/(.*)">{child3}</Route>
        {/* this is a fallback route */}
        <Route>{fallback}</Route>
    </Route>
</Router>;

More complicated

The source codes are in the repository https://github.com/only-jsx/react-router-slim-examples

//index.tsx
import React from 'react'
import { Router, Route, RouterContext, RouteContext } from 'react-router-slim';

interface LinkProps extends React.PropsWithChildren {
    to: string;
}

//Router Link component implementation
const Link = ({ children, to, replace }: LinkProps) => {
    const router = React.useContext(RouterContext);
    const onClick = (e: React.MouseEvent<HTMLAnchorElement>) => {
        e.preventDefault();
        router.navigate?.(to, undefined, replace);
    };

    return <a href={to} onClick={onClick}>{children}</a>
}

//It uses Route paramaters
const RoutedSpan = ({ children }) => {
    const route = React.useContext(RouteContext);

    if (!route) {
        throw new Error('RoutedSpan is not allowed outside the Router component');
    }

    const { params } = route;
    return <span>{children} {params.toString()}</span>;
}

//It does navigation to other routes
const LinkButton = ({ children }) => {
    const router = React.useContext(RouterContext);

    if (!router.navigate) {
        throw new Error('Router navigate is not defined');
    }

    return <button onClick={(e) => router.navigate('/hello/world', {state: 0}, true)}>{children}</button>;
}

const App = () => <Router>
    {/* Regular expressions in path */}
    <Route path="/router/(.*)">
        <Layout />
        {/* Part of a parent route path before any named parameter or regexp */}
        {/* becames a prefix for a child route */}
        {/* so this actually matches to /router/home */}
        <Route path="home">
            <RoutedSpan>RoutedSpan</RoutedSpan>
            <LinkButton>LinkButton</LinkButton>
            <Link to="/hello/world">Link</Link>
        </Route>
        <Route path="await"><AwaitPage/></Route>
        <Route path="long-load"><LongLoad/></Route>
        <Route path="todos" error={ErrorBoundary}>
            <TodosList/>
        </Route>
        <Route path="todos/(.*)" error={ErrorBoundary}>
            <h5>Todo</h5>
            {/* Named parameters */}
            <Route path=":id"><Todo/></Route>
        </Route>
        <Route path="error" error={ErrorBoundary}><ErrorComponent/></Route>
        {/* Route without a path is a fallback route */}
        <Route><Fallback /></Route>
    </Route>
</Router>;