Redux-First Router

Think of your app in terms of states, not routes or components. Connect your components and just dispatch Flux Standard Actions!

Motivation

To be able to use Redux as is while keeping the address bar in sync. To define paths as actions, and handle path params and query strings as action payloads.

The address bar and Redux actions should be bi-directionally mapped, including via the browser's back/forward buttons. Dispatch an action and the address bar updates. Change the address, and an action is dispatched.

In addition, here are some obstacles Redux-First Router seeks to avoid:

Rendering from state that doesn't come from Redux
Dealing with the added complexity from having state outside of Redux
Cluttering components with route-related code
Large API surface areas of frameworks like react-router and next.js
Routing frameworks getting in the way of optimizing animations (such as when animations coincide with component updates).
Having to do route changes differently in order to support server-side rendering.

Usage

Install

yarn add redux-first-router

(A minimal <Link> component exists in the separate package redux-first-router-link.)

Quickstart

// configureStore.js
import { applyMiddleware, combineReducers, compose, createStore } from 'redux'
import { connectRoutes } from 'redux-first-router'

import page from './pageReducer'

const routesMap = {
  HOME: '/',
  USER: '/user/:id'
}

export default function configureStore(preloadedState) {
  const { reducer, middleware, enhancer } = connectRoutes(routesMap)

  const rootReducer = combineReducers({ page, location: reducer })
  const middlewares = applyMiddleware(middleware)
  const enhancers = compose(enhancer, middlewares)

  const store = createStore(rootReducer, preloadedState, enhancers)

  return { store }
}

// pageReducer.js
import { NOT_FOUND } from 'redux-first-router'

const components = {
  HOME: 'Home',
  USER: 'User',
  [NOT_FOUND]: 'NotFound'
}

export default (state = 'HOME', action = {}) => components[action.type] || state

// App.js
import React from 'react'
import { connect } from 'react-redux'

// Contains 'Home', 'User' and 'NotFound'
import * as components from './components';

const App = ({ page }) => {
  const Component = components[page]
  return <Component />
}

const mapStateToProps = ({ page }) => ({ page })

export default connect(mapStateToProps)(App)

// components.js
import React from 'react'
import { connect } from 'react-redux'

const Home = () => <h3>Home</h3>

const User = ({ userId }) => <h3>{`User ${userId}`}</h3>
const mapStateToProps = ({ location }) => ({
  userId: location.payload.id
})
const ConnectedUser = connect(mapStateToProps)(User)

const NotFound = () => <h3>404</h3>

export { Home, ConnectedUser as User, NotFound }

Documentation

Basics

Flow Chart

connectRoutes

connectRoutes is the primary "work" you will do to get Redux First Router going. It's all about creating and maintaining a pairing of action types and dynamic express style route paths. If you use our <Link /> component and pass an action as its href prop, you can change the URLs you use here any time without having to change your application code.

URL parsing

Besides the simple option of matching a literal path, all matching capabilities of the path-to-regexp package we use are now supported, except unnamed parameters.

Flux Standard Actions

One of the goals of Redux First Router is to NOT alter your actions and be 100% flux standard action-compliant. That allows for automatic support for packages such as redux-actions.

Location Reducer

The location reducer primarily maintains the state of the current pathname and action dispatched (type + payload). That's its core mission.

Link Component

A minimal link component exists in the separate package redux-first-router-link.

Query Strings

Queries can be dispatched by assigning a query object containing key/vals to an action, its payload object or its meta object.

React Native

Redux First Router has been thought up from the ground up with React Native (and server environments) in mind. They both make use of the history package's createMemoryHistory. In coordination, we are able to present you with a first-rate developer experience when it comes to URL-handling on native. We hope you come away feeling: "this is what I've been waiting for."

Advanced

addRoutes

Sometimes you may want to dynamically add routes to routesMap, for example so that you can codesplit routesMap. You can do this using the addRoutes function.

Blocking navigation

Sometimes you may want to block navigation away from the current route, for example to prompt the user to save their changes.

Scroll Restoration

Complete Scroll restoration and hash #links handling is addressed primarily by one of our companion packages: redux-first-router-restore-scroll (we like to save you the bytes sent to clients if you don't need it).

Server Side Rendering

Ok, this is the biggest example here, but given what it does, we think it's extremely concise and sensible.

Client-Only API

The following are features you should avoid unless you have a reason that makes sense to use them. These features revolve around the history package's API. They make the most sense in React Native--for things like back button handling.

Low-level API

Below are some additional methods we export. The target user is package authors. Application developers will rarely need this.

Version 2 Migration Steps

In earlier versions history was a peerDependency, this is no longer the case since version 2 has its own history management tool. This means that the arguments passed to connectRoutes(documentation) need to be changed.

Usage with redux-persist

You might run into a situation where you want to trigger a redirect as soon as possible in case some particular piece of state is or is not set. A possible use case could be persisting checkout state, e.g. checkoutSteps.step1Completed.

Prior Art

These packages attempt in similar ways to reconcile the browser history with redux actions and state.

Recipes

Help add more recipes for these use cases. PR's welcome!

Topics for things you can do with redux-first-router but need examples written:

Performing redirects bases on state and payload.
Use hash-based routes/history (see the migration instructions)
Restoring scroll position
Handling optional URL fragments and query strings
Route change pre- & post-processing
Code-splitting
Server-side rendering
Usage together with react-universal-component, babel-plugin-universal-import, webpack-flush-chunks.

Where is new feature development occuring?

Feature development efforts are occuring in the Respond framework Rudy repository.

Contributing

We use commitizen, run npm run cm to make commits. A command-line form will appear, requiring you answer a few questions to automatically produce a nicely formatted commit. Releases, semantic version numbers, tags, changelogs and publishing will automatically be handled based on these commits thanks to [semantic-release](https:/ /github.com/semantic-release/semantic-release).

Community And Related Projects

Reactlandia chat lobby
react-universal-component. Made to work perfectly with Redux-First Router.
webpack-flush-chunks. The foundation of our Universal product line.