Remix JSON Routes

remix-json-routes is a package to allow you to define your Remix routes from a custom JSON structure, instead of (or in addition to ) the built in file-based routing convention.

Installation

npm install remix-json-routes

Using JSON Routes

You leverage this package via the routes function in remix.config.js. The second argument to jsonRoutes is an array of routes similar to what you would pass to createBrowserRouter in React Router, where you define the route path information (path, index, children), but then instead of specifying an element/action/loader/etc., you specify the file path pointing to a Remix route file which exports those aspects.

const { jsonRoutes } = require("remix-json-routes");

/** @type {import('@remix-run/dev').AppConfig} */
module.exports = {
  // Note this ignores everything in routes/ giving you complete control over
  // your routes.  If you want to define routes in addition to what's in routes/,
  // change this to "ignoredRouteFiles": ["**/.*"].
  ignoredRouteFiles: ["**/*"],
  routes(defineRoutes) {
    return jsonRoutes(defineRoutes, [
      {
        path: "/",
        file: "routes/layout.tsx",
        children: [
          {
            index: true,
            file: "routes/some/path/to/home.tsx",
          },
          {
            path: "about",
            file: "routes/some/path/to/about.tsx",
          },
        ],
      },
    ]);
  },
};

Using JSX Routes

remix.config.js does not support JSX out of the box, but with a small prebuild step you can also define your routes with JSX. The easiest way to do this is to put your JSX route definitions in a route.jsx file that is transpiled to a routes.js file as a prebuild step which you can then require from remix.config.js.

Create your routes.jsx file

This file should export your JSX tree using the Route component from remix-json-routes:

const React = require("react");
const { Route } = require("remix-json-routes");

module.exports = (
  <Route path="/" file="routes/layout.tsx">
    <Route index file="routes/some/path/to/home.tsx" />
    <Route path="about" file="routes/testsome/path/to/about.tsx" />
  </Route>
);

Create a prebuild step to build routes.js

We'll need to install some babel tooling to perform this transpilation:

npm i babel-cli babel-preset-react

Then, add jsxroutes, prebuild, and predev scripts to your package.json so we always build a fresh version of routes.jsx to routes.js before npm run build and npm run dev:

{
  "scripts": {
    "jsxroutes": "babel --presets react routes.jsx > routes.js",
    "prebuild": "npm run jsxroutes",
    "predev": "npm run jsxroutes",
    "build": "remix build",
    "dev": "remix dev",
    "...": "..."
  }
}

Note You will probably want to add routes.js to your .gitignore file as well.

Edit your remix.config.js to use jsxRoutes

// remix.config.js
const { jsxRoutes } = require("remix-json-routes");
const routes = require("./routes");

/** @type {import('@remix-run/dev').AppConfig} */
module.exports = {
  ignoredRouteFiles: ["**/*"],
  routes(defineRoute) {
    return jsxRoutes(defineRoute, routes);
  },
};