What is Hookrouter?

Routing is not a feature that comes standard with React.js and hookrouter is the modern approach that simplifies navigation features within react components.

React hooks provide the foundation of the hook-router module. It is feature-rich and simple enough for fresher developers to get started.

In this section, we will be going over what React.js Routing is and how Hooks routing alternative useRoutes() works in React.

What is Routing in React?

Routing is a way to define user navigation through a set of pages available in an application. To do this, it will create static HTML views that are loaded when the user visits different parts of your app or site, and update them as they navigate around.

React.js router is built on top of React and it helps in moving from one view to another. It's a simple Javascript function that takes all the necessary information about your current location in your application and then displays the corresponding view to the user.

With React.js Routing, when viewing a URL in the browser, there is no need for reloading the page to see different content. The browser changes the URL and then renders what it needs to satisfy that URL.

Hookrouter

Hookrouter is an open-source routing package for React.js applications that provides a high-order component for routing and requests. It connects the React components with their corresponding routes in the browser's URL and makes it easy to dynamically update URL paths without reloading the whole page.

The useRouter() hook is a perfect solution for routing in React applications. It is an alternative to the popular react-router library and it provides some extra features that the react-router doesn't have. One of the primary use cases for the hook is creating an application with a single page.

The hooks work by attaching them to the high-order components, and they are invoked once the component mounts on DOM.

This routing solution offers a lot of flexibility as it provides essential features like lazy loading, deep linking, and page redirects to name a few.

• It does not link-in any state management library like Redux or MobX, this means that you can use Hookrouter for both small and large applications alike!

• Hookrouter works with the browser’s location to update the URL, rather than relying on manually specifying it; this ensures your URL will never break

The Hooks routing alternative to React can help you avoid some of the pitfalls of using React.js Routing such as code repetition and its reliance on external libraries when trying to add more advanced features such as Ajax, authentication, or SEO optimization for instance.

Hook-router vs React-router

React-router is a routing library for React which is used to handle the URL changes in an application. It has the ability to automatically generate the appropriate links and manage history.

These are two major options that developers can use: hook-router, and react-router.

A hook-router makes use of React's event system to change the URL when a component's state changes, which means that it doesn't have any guarantee about what route was taken when the URL was changed.

A react-router uses React's setState() function to change URL ids rather than using React's event system, which means it does not have any issue with keeping track of what route was taken in order to change URLs.

Both of them offer a lot of benefits over each other but they also come with some disadvantages, so it would be good if you had a look at both options before deciding on which one to use.

Key Features of HookRouter in React

Let’s move further to discuss some highlighting features of the hook-router-

navigate() method

You have accessibility to a navigate() Hook method through the hookrouter component, which will direct the client to any URL you pass. Users can use their browser's back key to go to their previous URL because each use to a navigate() function is progressive navigation.

You could perhaps be wondering how the navigation() hook functions. It primarily accepts three variables: [queryParams]), [replace], and navigate(URL, where the second parameter controls the replace behavior. The existing record entry is deleted, and a fresh one is created. You merely update its parameter to true to get that result.

navigate('/user', true);

The code sample presented following, for instance, can be employed to access the about webpage.

navigate('/about')

By default, navigate() does progressive navigation. As a result, a new record shall be made in the user's browser history, and they can return to the last page by clicking the back key on their browser.

Switch Functionality

The <Switch> renders only routes by displaying a first child <Redirect> or <Route>, which corresponds to the address. When the specified navigation routes don't match, <Switch> is typically used to generate a 404 page.

These routes are presented once routing is performed with the Hookrouter because they are specified in an object. As a result, by default, its useRoutes() hook executes the <Switch> component's functionality. For example, utilizing Hookrouter, you only need to give the error you like to present or the element holding the error code for displaying to navigate the 404 webpages.

useRedirect() hook

The useRedirect() hook, which can accept a routing path and a destination route as inputs, is exported by the hookrouter package.

useRedirect('/user', '/dashboard');

When the '/user' path matches, this shall instantly reroute visitors to a '/dashboard' page.

It's essential to keep in mind that this useRedirect() hook starts a new navigation purpose. There'll only be a single record in the route history. As you observed in the last excerpt, when a redirect occurs from the '/user' to the '/dashboard,' then the '/user' URL won't appear in the browser history. Just the "/dashboard" route shall be available.

Conclusion

Hookrouter offers numerous additional capabilities than the React-router library, including server-side graphics, nested routing, and lazy downloading of components, in addition to the ones covered here.

It is evident from the article here that the Hookrouter module provides a more adaptable, quicker, and better way to manage routing in the React applications.