Sane Router (for React)

…because most routers suck at something. Sane Router supports:

• location-dependent and location-independent (in-memory) routing

  var locationRouter = createRouter()
  var memoryRouter = createRouter({ historyDriver: 'memory' })

• pathname base (root)

  var router = createRouter({ locationBase: '/app' })
  router.setRoutes({
    '/my/path': 'my-target',
  })
  // Routes /app/my/path as /my/path, thus to the "my-target" target.
  // Pathnames outside the /app namespace are ignored.

• multiple instances living side-by-side without interfering

  var router1 = createRouter({ historyDriver: 'memory' })
  var router2 = createRouter({ historyDriver: 'memory' })

• plain React elements

  router.registerTarget('homepage', <Homepage />)
  
  <App>
    {router.createTargetElement()}
  </App>

• route aliasing

  router.setRoutes({
    '/projects': 'projects/index',
    '/': '/projects', // also points at projects/index
  })

• route parameters

  router.setRoutes({
    '/projects/:id/edit': 'edit',
    '/edit/:id': '/projects/:id/edit', // alias with a parameter
  })
  router.registerTarget('edit', ({ id }) => { <EditForm id={id} /> })

• seamless error page registration, error page is just another target

  router.registerTarget(router.StatusCodes.NOT_FOUND, <PageNotFound />)
  router.setRoutes({
    '/fake-page': router.StatusCodes.NOT_FOUND,
  })

  Note: The router.StatusCodes.NOT_FOUND target is used for missing routes. The target is, however, not registered by default and router.createTargetElement() is an empty <div> element.

• React contexts as there are no inner render() calls

  class App extends React.Component {
    childContextTypes: { myService: React.PropTypes.object }
    getChildContext() { { myService } }
    render() { router.createTargetElement() }
  }
  
  class MyTargetContent extends React.Component {
    contextTypes: { myService: React.PropTypes.object }
    render() { <span>{this.context.myService.data}</span> }
  }
  
  myService = { data: 'Whoa' }
  router.registerTarget('/path', <MyTargetContent />)
  // <App> renders <span>Whoa</span>

Installation

npm install react-sane-router

Usage

1. Import the factory and create a router

import { createRouter } from 'react-sane-router'

router = createRouter()

The default history manupulation driver

2. Declare targets

These are React elements or React element factories. Targets can be nested.

router.registerTarget('homepage', <Homepage />)
router.registerTarget('projects', {
  'index': <ProjectList />,
  'detail': ({ id }) => { <Project projectId={id} /> },
  'edit': ({ id }) => { <EditProjectForm projectId={id} /> },
})

3. Declare routes

A route is a pathname mapping onto a target or a different pathname. Nested targets are referenced with target paths.

router.setRoutes({
  '/': 'homepage',
  '/projects': 'projects/index',
  '/projects/:id': 'projects/detail',
  '/projects/:id/edit': 'projects/edit',
})

4. Insert the target element to the render tree

This can be wherever desired in the tree, the following demonstrates insertion to the root component App.

var App = ({ router }) => {
  <div class="app">{router.createTargetElement()}</div>
}

var node = document.createElement('div')
document.body.appendChild(node)
ReactDOM.render(<App router={router} />, node)

Examples

Check out the examples/ directory.

You can build and run the examples on your machine:

git clone git://github.com/jankuca/react-sane-router.git
cd react-sane-router
npm install
npm run build-examples
open examples/single-router/index.html