spa-router-vir
v4.0.4
Published
The heroic, type safe, frontend router for any modern Single Page Application (SPA).
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spa-router-vir
The heroic, type safe, frontend router for any modern Single Page Application (SPA).
It works by hooking into window.history.pushState
and window.history.replaceState
.
Install
Install via npm:
npm i spa-router-vir
Examples
- The GitHub repo for this package contains an example which can be tested using
npm start
. - The
threejs-experiments
repo utilizes this package.
Usage
Creating a Router
Create a router by constructing SpaRouter
. Ensure that you only ever have a single active router at a time. You must provide a sanitizeRoute
callback for ensuring that run-time routes actually match your required route types.
Here is an example usage of SpaRouter
with full run-time route type safety:
import {FullRoute, SpaRouter} from 'spa-router-vir';
export const myRouter = new SpaRouter<
/** The allowed router paths. */
ValidRouterPaths,
/** This router does not allow _any_ search params. */
undefined,
/** This router does not allow _any_ hash string. */
undefined
>({
/**
* `sanitizeRoute` is required and is the only way to ensure route type safety at run-time. This
* ensures that all URLs navigated to from within your SPA are valid and handled by your
* application.
*/
sanitizeRoute(rawRoute) {
return {
paths: sanitizePaths(rawRoute),
search: undefined,
hash: undefined,
};
},
});
/**
* Example valid paths that allow the following website URL paths:
*
* - `/home`
* - `/gallery/<any-string>`
* - `/about`
* - `/about/team`
* - `/about/website`
*/
export type ValidRouterPaths =
| ['home']
| ['gallery', /** Specific gallery id. */ string]
| ['about']
| ['about', 'team' | 'website'];
/** A helper function that specifically sanitizes the `paths` part of the route. */
export function sanitizePaths(rawRoute: Readonly<Pick<FullRoute, 'paths'>>): ValidRouterPaths {
const topLevelPath = rawRoute.paths[0];
if (topLevelPath === 'about') {
if (rawRoute.paths[1] !== 'team' && rawRoute.paths[1] !== 'website') {
return ['about'];
} else {
return [
'about',
rawRoute.paths[1],
];
}
} else if (topLevelPath === 'gallery' && rawRoute.paths[1]) {
return [
'gallery',
rawRoute.paths[1],
];
} else {
/** Default to this route. */
return ['home'];
}
}
Supporting SPAs on GitHub Pages (or other similar services)
To use SpaRouter on GitHub Pages, you must set a basePath
property when constructing SpaRouter
. This ensures that your GitHub Pages repo path is maintained:
import {SpaRouter} from 'spa-router-vir';
import {ValidRouterPaths, sanitizePaths} from './router-creation.example';
export const myRouter = new SpaRouter<
/** Use the same route type parameters as the earlier example for simplicity. */
ValidRouterPaths,
undefined,
undefined
>({
/** Sue the same route sanitizer as the earlier example for simplicity. */
sanitizeRoute(rawRoute) {
return {
paths: sanitizePaths(rawRoute),
search: undefined,
hash: undefined,
};
},
basePath: 'my-repo',
});
You can see this in action on the threejs-experiments
example demo. Notice that threejs-experiments
is always the first path and it does not mess up the router.
In addition to setting the router up, to get a SPA to work on GitHub Pages you need to copy paste your index.html
and rename the copy to 404.html
in the top-level of your GitHub Pages deployed directory. That is done in threejs-experiments
as part of the deploy pipeline script.
Listening to route changes
Use listen
to listen to route changes. When true
, the first parameter (which is called fireImmediately
) will force your router to immediately call the given listener callback. This prevents the need to manually call your own callback to update route-specific content on first page load.
import {myRouter} from './router-creation.example';
myRouter.listen(true, (routes) => {
console.info(routes);
});
Listeners can be removed with the removeListener()
method, or by calling the return value of .listen()
:
import {FullRoute} from 'spa-router-vir';
import {myRouter, ValidRouterPaths} from './router-creation.example';
/** Remove a listener with the removal callback. */
{
const removeListener = myRouter.listen(true, (route) => {
console.info(route);
});
removeListener();
}
/** Remove a listener by keeping track of it and passing it in to `removeListener`. */
{
function listenToRoute(route: FullRoute<ValidRouterPaths, undefined, undefined>) {
console.info(route);
}
myRouter.listen(true, listenToRoute);
myRouter.removeListener(listenToRoute);
}
Creating a URL for links
To create a single URL string for any given route, use the createRouteUrl()
method. This will create a URL that takes the SpaRouter
's basePath
into account, if it's provided, so you don't have to manually handle that yourself.
import {myRouter} from './router-creation.example';
document.getElementsByTagName('a')[0]!.href = myRouter.createRouteUrl({
paths: [
'gallery',
'gallery-id-here',
],
});
Navigating Routes
To navigate to a new route, use the .setRoute()
method. This will first sanitize your route, ensure that it properly includes basePath
, and set it to the window URL:
import {myRouter} from './router-creation.example';
myRouter.setRoute({
paths: [
'gallery',
'another-gallery-id',
],
});
Note that you can also use the method .setRouteOnDirectNavigation()
to navigate to routes only if a given MouseEvent
allows direct navigation. (Meaning, only if the user didn't try to open a link in a new tab or right click on the link.)