The router for Voby.
This is a port of Solid-App-Router to voby.
A router lets you change your view based on the URL in the browser. This allows your "single-page" application to simulate a traditional multipage site. To use voby router, you specify components called Routes that depend on the value of the URL (the "path"), and the router handles the mechanism of swapping them in and out.
Voby router is a universal router for voby - it works whether you're rendering on the client or on the server. It was inspired by and combines paradigms of React Router and the Ember Router. Routes can be defined directly in your app's template using JSX, but you can also pass your route configuration directly as an object. It also supports nested routing, so navigation can change a part of a component, rather than completely replacing it.
Use it freely with suspense, resources, and lazy components. Voby router also allows you to define a data function that loads parallel to the routes (render-as-you-fetch).
- Getting Started
- Create Links to Your Routes
- Dynamic Routes
- Data Functions
- Nested Routes
- Config Based Routing
- Router Primitives
> npm i voby-router
Install voby-router
, then wrap your root component with the Router component:
import { render } from "voby";
import { Router } from "voby-router";
import App from "./App";
render(
() => (
<Router>
<App />
</Router>
),
document.getElementById("app")
);
This sets up a context so that we can display the routes anywhere in the app.
voby-router
allows you to configure your routes using JSX:
- Use the
Routes
component to specify where the routes should appear in your app.
import { Routes, Route } from "voby-router"
export default function App() {
return (
<>
<h1>My Site with Lots of Pages</h1>
<Routes>
</Routes>
<>
)
}
- Add each route using the
Route
component, specifying a path and an element to render when the user navigates to that path.
import { Routes, Route } from "voby-router"
import Home from "./pages/Home"
import Users from "./pages/Users"
export default function App() {
return (
<>
<h1>My Site with Lots of Pages</h1>
<Routes>
<Route path="/users" element={<Users/>} />
<Route path="/" element={<Home/>} />
<Route path="/about" element={<div>This site was made with Voby</div>} />
</Routes>
<>
)
}
- Lazy-load route components
This way, the Users
and Home
components will only be loaded if you're navigating to /users
or /
, respectively.
import { lazy } from "voby";
import { Routes, Route } from "voby-router"
const Users = lazy(() => import("./pages/Home"));
const Home = lazy(() => import("./pages/Users"));
export default function App() {
return (
<>
<h1>My Site with Lots of Pages</h1>
<Routes>
<Route path="/users" element={<Users/>} />
<Route path="/" element={<Home/>} />
<Route path="/about" element={<div>This site was made with Voby</div>} />
</Routes>
<>
)
}
Use the A
component to create an anchor tag that takes you to a route:
import { lazy } from "voby";
import { Routes, Route, A } from "voby-router"
const Users = lazy(() => import("./pages/Home"));
const Home = lazy(() => import("./pages/Users"));
export default function App() {
return (
<>
<h1>My Site with Lots of Pages</h1>
<nav>
<A href="/about">About</A>
<A href="/">Home</A>
</nav>
<Routes>
<Route path="/users" element={<Users/>} />
<Route path="/" element={<Home/>} />
<Route path="/about" element={<div>This site was made with Voby</div>} />
</Routes>
<>
)
}
The <A>
tag also has an active
class if its href matches the current location, and inactive
otherwise. Note: By default matching includes locations that are descendents (eg. href /users
matches locations /users
and /users/123
), use the boolean end
prop to prevent matching these. This is particularly useful for links to the root route /
which would match everything.
prop | type | description |
---|---|---|
href | string | The path of the route to navigate to. This will be resolved relative to the route that the link is in, but you can preface it with / to refer back to the root. |
noScroll | boolean | If true, turn off the default behavior of scrolling to the top of the new page |
replace | boolean | If true, don't add a new entry to the browser history. (By default, the new page will be added to the browser history, so pressing the back button will take you to the previous route.) |
state | unknown | Push this value to the history stack when navigating |
inactiveClass | string | The class to show when the link is inactive (when the current location doesn't match the link) |
activeClass | string | The class to show when the link is active |
end | boolean | If true , only considers the link to be active when the curent location matches the href exactly; if false , check if the current location starts with href |
voby-router
provides a Navigate
component that works similarly to A
, but it will immediately navigate to the provided path as soon as the component is rendered. It also uses the href
prop, but you have the additional option of passing a function to href
that returns a path to navigate to:
function getPath ({navigate, location}) {
//navigate is the result of calling useNavigate(); location is the result of calling useLocation().
//You can use those to dynamically determine a path to navigate to
return "/some-path";
}
//Navigating to /redirect will redirect you to the result of getPath
<Route path="/redirect" element={ <Navigate href={getPath}/>} />
If you don't know the path ahead of time, you might want to treat part of the path as a flexible parameter that is passed on to the component.
import { lazy } from "voby";
import { Routes, Route } from "voby-router"
const Users = lazy(() => import("./pages/Home"));
const Home = lazy(() => import("./pages/Users"));
const Home = lazy(() => import("./pages/User"));
export default function App() {
return (
<>
<h1>My Site with Lots of Pages</h1>
<Routes>
<Route path="/users" element={<Users/>} />
<Route path="/users/:id" element={<User/>} />
<Route path="/" element={<Home/>} />
<Route path="/about" element={<div>This site was made with Voby</div>} />
</Routes>
<>
)
}
The colon indicates that id
can be any string, and as long as the URL fits that pattern, the User
component will show.
You can then access that id
from within a route component with useParams
:
//async fetching function
import { fetchUser } ...
export default function User () {
const params = useParams();
const [userData] = createResource(() => params.id, fetchUser);
return <A href={userData.twitter}>{userData.name}</A>
}
:param
lets you match an arbitrary name at that point in the path. You can use *
to match any end of the path:
//Matches any path that begins with foo, including foo/, foo/a/, foo/a/b/c
<Route path='foo/*' element={<Foo/>}/>
If you want to expose the wild part of the path to the component as a parameter, you can name it:
<Route path='foo/*any' element={<div>{useParams().any}</div>}/>
Note that the wildcard token must be the last part of the path; foo/*any/bar
won't create any routes.
In the above example, the User component is lazy-loaded and then the data is fetched. With route data functions, we can instead start fetching the data parallel to loading the route, so we can use the data as soon as possible.
To do this, create a function that fetches and returns the data using createResource
. Then pass that function to the data
prop of the Route
component.
import { lazy } from "voby";
import { Route } from "voby-router";
import { fetchUser } ...
const User = lazy(() => import("/pages/users/[id].js"));
//Data function
function UserData({params, location, navigate, data}) {
const [user] = createResource(() => params.id, fetchUser);
return user;
}
//Pass it in the route definition
<Route path="/users/:id" element={<User />} data={UserData} />;
When the route is loaded, the data function is called, and the result can be accessed by calling useRouteData()
in the route component.
//pages/users/[id].js
import { useRouteData } from 'voby-router';
export default function User() {
const user = useRouteData();
return <h1>{user().name}</h1>;
}
As its only argument, the data function is passed an object that you can use to access route information:
key | type | description |
---|---|---|
params | object | The route parameters (same value as calling useParams() inside the route component) |
location | { pathname, search, hash, query, state, key} |
An object that you can use to get more information about the path (corresponds to useLocation() ) |
navigate | (to: string, options?: NavigateOptions) => void |
A function that you can call to navigate to a different route instead (corresponds to useNavigate() ) |
data | unknown | The data returned by the parent's data function, if any. (Data will pass through any intermediate nesting.) |
A common pattern is to export the data function that corresponds to a route in a dedicated route.data.js
file. This way, the data function can be imported without loading anything else.
import { lazy } from "voby";
import { Route } from "voby-router";
import { fetchUser } ...
import UserData from "./pages/users/[id].data.js";
const User = lazy(() => import("/pages/users/[id].js"));
// In the Route definition
<Route path="/users/:id" element={<User />} data={UserData} />;
The following two route definitions have the same result:
<Route path="/users/:id" element={<User/>} />
<Route path="/users">
<Route path="/:id" element={<User/>} />
</Route>
/users/:id
renders the <User/>
component, and /users/
is an empty route.
Only leaf Route nodes (innermost Route
components) are given a route. If you want to make the parent its own route, you have to specify it separately:
//This won't work the way you'd expect
<Route path="/users" element={<Users/>}>
<Route path="/:id" element={<User/>} />
</Route>
//This works
<Route path="/users" element={<Users/>} />
<Route path="/users/:id" element={<User/>} />
//This also works
<Route path="/users">
<Route path="/" element={<Users/>} />
<Route path="/:id" element={<User/>} />
</Route>
You can also take advantage of nesting by adding a parent element with an <Outlet/>
.
import { Outlet } from "voby-router";
function PageWrapper () {
return <div>
<h1> We love our users! </h1>
<Outlet/>
<A href="/">Back Home</A>
</div>
}
<Route path="/users" element={<PageWrapper/>}>
<Route path="/" element={<Users/>} />
<Route path="/:id" element={<User/>} />
</Route>
The routes are still configured the same, but now the route elements will appear inside the parent element where the <Outlet/>
was declared.
You can nest indefinitely - just remember that only leaf nodes will become their own routes. In this example, the only route created is /layer1/layer2
, and it appears as three nested divs.
<Route path='/' element={<div>Onion starts here <Outlet /></div>}>
<Route path='layer1' element={<div>Another layer <Outlet /></div>}>
<Route path='layer2' element={<div>Innermost layer</div>}></Route>
</Route>
</Route>
If you declare a data
function on a parent and a child, the result of the parent's data function will be passed to the child's data function as the data
property of the argument, as described in the last section. This works even if it isn't a direct child, because by default every route forwards its parent's data.
You don't have to use JSX to set up your routes; you can pass an object directly with useRoutes
:
import { lazy, render } from "voby";
import { Router, useRoutes, A } from "voby-router";
const routes = [
{
path: "/users",
component: lazy(() => import("/pages/users.js"))
},
{
path: "/users/:id",
component: lazy(() => import("/pages/users/[id].js")),
children: [
{ path: "/", component: lazy(() => import("/pages/users/[id]/index.js")) },
{ path: "/settings", component: lazy(() => import("/pages/users/[id]/settings.js")) },
{ path: "/*all", component: lazy(() => import("/pages/users/[id]/[...all].js")) }
]
},
{
path: "/",
component: lazy(() => import("/pages/index.js"))
},
{
path: "/*all",
component: lazy(() => import("/pages/[...all].js"))
}
];
function App() {
const Routes = useRoutes(routes);
return (
<>
<h1>Awesome Site</h1>
<A class="nav" href="/">
Home
</A>
<A class="nav" href="/users">
Users
</A>
<Routes />
</>
);
}
render(
() => (
<Router>
<App />
</Router>
),
document.getElementById("app")
);
Voby Router provides a number of primitives that read off the Router and Route context.
Retrieves an object containing the route path parameters as defined in the Route.
const params = useParams();
// fetch user based on the id path parameter
const [user] = createResource(() => params.id, fetchUser);
Retrieves method to do navigation. The method accepts a path to navigate to and an optional object with the following options:
- resolve (boolean, default
true
): resolve the path against the current route - replace (boolean, default
false
): replace the history entry - scroll (boolean, default
true
): scroll to top after navigation - state (any, default
undefined
): pass custom state tolocation.state
Note: The state is serialized using the structured clone algorithm which does not support all object types.
const navigate = useNavigate();
if (unauthorized) {
navigate("/login", { replace: true });
}
Retrieves reactive location
object useful for getting things like pathname
const location = useLocation();
const pathname = useComputed(() => parsePath(location.pathname));
Retrieves a tuple containing a reactive object to read the current location's query parameters and a method to update them. The object is a proxy so you must access properties to subscribe to reactive updates. Note values will be strings and property names will retain their casing.
The setter method accepts an object whose entries will be merged into the current query string. Values ''
, undefined
and null
will remove the key from the resulting query string. Updates will behave just like a navigation and the setter accepts the same optional second parameter as navigate
and auto-scrolling is disabled by default.
const [searchParams, setSearchParams] = useSearchParams();
return (
<div>
<span>Page: {searchParams.page}</span>
<button onClick={() => setSearchParams({ page: searchParams.page + 1 })}>Next Page</button>
</div>
);
Retrieves the return value from the data function.
In previous versions you could use numbers to access parent data. This is no longer supported. Instead the data functions themselves receive the parent data that you can expose through the specific nested routes data.
const user = useRouteData();
return <h1>{user().name}</h1>;
useMatch
takes an accessor that returns the path and creates a Memo that returns match information if the current path matches the provided path. Useful for determining if a given path matches the current route.
const match = useMatch(() => props.href);
return <div classList={{ active: Boolean(match()) }} />;
Used to define routes via a config object instead of JSX. See Config Based Routing.