Defining React Routers via API

One of the issues I faced while using React for my project is which Router to use? React obviously being a new framework on the block, there are plenty of plugins/components that are being actively developed and not many are (yet) stable. Some plugins are just enough different for you to want a new feature, but it wont support other features required. You can see how bullet-point engineering does not help much. You gotta try out a few and see what works best.

For the Router, react-router is the most popular, featured and well-documented, but it (v0.12.0) did not have one feature I was looking for: Ability to define routers closest to the handler itself.

All the routes go into a single file, usually your app.js, like this:

var routes = (
  <Route name="app" path="/" handler={App}>
    <Route name="login" path="/login" handler={Login}/>
    <Route name="logout" path="/logout" handler={Logout}/>
    <Route name="page1" path="/page1" handler={Page1}/>
    <Route name="page2" path="/page2" handler={Page2}/>
    <DefaultRoute handler={Login}/>
  </Route>
);

Router.run(routes, function(Handler) {
  React.render(<Handler/>, document.body);
});

If the application grows, this is less than ideal and can bloat the app.js. And it somewhat breaks modularity too (even though the app.js will eventually know everything, it forces you to wire the routes statically). The react-mini-router defines the routes as part of component as a mixin and I think thats pretty convenient.

With react-router v0.12.2+ the routes can be configured via api. This is not documented yet officially, afaik.

approute.js

module.exports = Router.createRoute({ name: "app", path: "/", handler: App});

auth.js

var AppRoute = require('./approute.js');
Router.createRoute({ name: "login", path: "/login", parentRoute: AppRoute, handler: Login});
Router.createRoute({ name: "logout", path: "/logout", parentRoute: AppRoute, handler: Logout});

page1.js

var AppRoute = require('./approute.js');
Router.createRoute({ name: "page1", path: "/page1", parentRoute: AppRoute, handler: Page1});


app.js

var AppRoute = require('./approute.js');
Router.createDefaultRoute({parentRoute: AppRoute, handler: Login});

Router.run([ AppRoute ], function (Handler) {
  React.render(<Handler/>, document.body);
});

Notice how the variable routes is replaced with [ AppRoute ]. This is important!.

In auth.js, if defining multiple routes, If you dont want to use parentRoute property, you can also do this:

AppRoute.addRoutes([ LoginRoute, LogoutRoute ]);