Conditional Routing with React Router V6

#react #javascript #webdev #programming

Lets take a look at how to render a component on a certain route conditionally using React router v6 features.

Perquisites

Install React Router V6 using the following npm command:
npm install react-router-dom@6

Next, import the following components from react router dom.

import {
  BrowserRouter as Router,
  Route,
  Routes,
  Navigate,
} from "react-router-dom";

Cresting the Routes

Firstly wrap all the content of your page inside the return function inside the . Next, create the induvial routes inside the component.

return (
    <Router>
      <Routes>
        <Route exact path="/" element={<Home />} />
        <Route exact path="start" element={<Start />} />
      </Routes>
    </Router>
)

For each route, we have the path and the element props, these tell the path on the address bar and the component to be rendered out respectively. The exact prop ensures that the *location.pathname * will match exact location path.

Conditional Routing

Lets say we want to render a component only if a state is true for example if a user is logged in, we can do that like this:

<Route
  exact
  path="start"
  element={
    loggedIn ? (
      <Start />
    ) : (
      <Navigate replace to={"/"} />
    )
  }
/>

Basically here we are checking if the loggedIn state is true. If it is, we return the Start component, however if it is false, we redirect the user to the homepage using the Navigate element.

The replace prop simply replaces the current location with the given path instead of adding on to it.

Thanks for reading!

Discussion (6)

Bhavyashah • Jul 3

@salehmubashar Can you Please add some examples or some demo so we can understand very well.

Saleh Mubashar • Jul 3 • Edited on Jul 3

hmm, something like this may clear your mind.
For example we have a state that we can toggle with a button. We can add a function on the button to toggle the state which in turn shows/hides the component/route

import * as React from "react";
import {  useState } from "react";
import { BrowserRouter as Router, Routes,Route,Navigate } from "react-router-dom";
import Start from "./Start";

function App() {
  const [loggedIn, setLoggedIn ] = useState(true)
  const toggleRoute = () =>{
    setLoggedIn(!loggedIn)
  }
  return (
    <>
    <Router>
      <Routes>
        <Route
          exact
          path="start"
          element={loggedIn ? <Start /> : <Navigate replace to={"/"} />}
        />
      </Routes>
    </Router>
    <button onClick={toggleRoute}>Toggle</button>
    </>
  );
}
export default App;

Bhavyashah • Jul 3

Like instagram login and sign-up components???

Saleh Mubashar • Jul 3

yes that is a good use. You can set user roles with this so that only specific people or users
can access the Route. I recently created an app in which I wanted the users to be able to see a Route if they
had solved a quiz, so this trick came in handy

Shuy • Aug 16

I am a little late, but I was wondering, if you have multiple route that use the same condition as you (with the loggedIn boolean value), is there a way to move the condition out of the all those round and somehow wrap those routes with the condition to avoid repitition?