React Router Component

Table of contents

React router component allows you to define routes in your React application in a declarative manner, directly as a part of your component hierarchy.

Usage is as simple as just returning a configured router component from your component's render() method:

<Locations> <Location path="/" handler={MainPage} /> <Location path="/users/:username" handler={UserPage} /> <Location path="/search/*" handler={SearchPage} /> <Location path={/\/product\/([0-9]*)/} handler={ProductPage} /> </Locations>

Having routes defined as a part of your component hierarchy allows to dynamically reconfigure routing based on your application state. For example you can return a different set of allowed locations for anonymous and signed-in users.

React router component can dispatch based on location.pathname or location.hash if browser doesn't support History API.

Furthermore it provides advanced features like support for full page server side rendering, multiple routers on the same page, querystring parsing, contextual routers and optional handling of normal <a> elements.

Its functionality is tested using Saucelabs on all modern browsers (IE >= 9, Chrome >= 27, Firefox >= 25, Safari >= 6 and Mobile Safari on iPhone and iPad >= 6).

Its size is about 3.5kb gzipped.

Installation

React router component is packaged on npm:

% npm install react-router-component

Basic usage

First you require react-router-component library:

var React = require('react') var Router = require('react-router-component')

If you are using JSX, don't forget to bring components from a library into scope, cause JSX doesn't support namespaces yet:

var Locations = Router.Locations var Location = Router.Location

Otherwise, as of React 0.12, you must create factories:

var Locations = React.createFactory(Router.Locations) var Location = React.createFactory(Router.Location)

Now you can define your application as a regular React component which renders into Locations router:

var CreateReactClass = require('create-react-class'); var App = CreateReactClass({ render: function() { return ( <Locations> <Location path="/" handler={MainPage} /> <Location path="/users/:username" handler={UserPage} /> <Location path={/\/friends\/(\d+)\/(photos|wall)/} handler={FriendsPage} urlPatternOptions={['id', 'pageName']} /> </Locations> ) } })

Note: See hash routing to enable location.hash .

Direct children of Locations router must be Location route descriptors.

Each descriptor accepts a path property which specifies URL pattern and a handler property which declares a component which should render in case corresponding path is matched.

Parameters extracted from a path will be passed to a handler as props. In the example above, UserPage component will receive username prop on a successful location match.

The final part is to render your App component which activates your router:

React.render(React.createElement(App), document.body)

In case no location is matched router would render into an empty set of elements.

Regular expressions

Regular expressions are an easy way to accomplish more advanced routing.

When using a regular expression, parameters extracted from the regex will be passed as an array with the name _ . This may be inconvenient if your components are reused. If you specify an array of keys and pass it as the urlPatternOptions prop, matches from the regex will be translated.

For example, in the App above, the path /friends/39/wall would pass the props {id: '39', pageName: 'wall'} to the handler, FriendsPage .

Handling "404 Not Found" case

You might want to specify a fallback location which will be activated in case no other location is matched. For that there's a special NotFound location descriptor:

var NotFound = Router.NotFound var CreateReactClass = require('create-react-class'); var App = CreateReactClass({ render: function() { return ( <Locations> <Location path="/" handler={MainPage} /> <Location path="/users/:username" handler={UserPage} /> <NotFound handler={NotFoundPage} /> </Locations> ) } })

Navigating between locations

To navigate between different locations React router component provides a Link component. It renders into <a> DOM element but handles "click" by activating a different location in the router.

As an example, let's see how MainPage component can be implemented with the usage of the Link component to transition to a UserPage :

var Link = require('react-router-component').Link var CreateReactClass = require('create-react-class'); var MainPage = CreateReactClass({ render: function() { return ( <div> Hello, this is main page of the application! Proceed to my <Link href="/users/andreypopp">user page</Link>. </div> ) } })

Alternatively, if you have a reference to a router component instance, you can call its .navigate(href) method to do a transition to a different location. You can acquire a reference to a router by using React's Refs mechanism.

Navigation callbacks

Routers also accept callbacks onBeforeNavigation and onNavigation as properties which will be called before and after navigation correspondingly:

<Locations onBeforeNavigation={this.showProgressBar} onNavigation={this.hideProgressBar}> <Location path="/" handler={MainPage} /> ... </Locations>

Custom / No Router Component

Routers also accept a component prop, so you can change the rendered parent component:

<Locations component="section">...

You can also remove the wrapper entirely by passing a falsy value. This will render the matching route directly without wrapping.

<Locations component={null}>....

Advanced usage

Advanced features include support for full page server side rendering, multiple routers on the same page and contextual routers.

Recipes

These are the examples of what you can do with React Router component: