Client Side Routing

Many React Spectrum components support rendering as HTML links. This page discusses how to set up your app to integrate React Spectrum links with your framework or client side router.

Introduction

React Spectrum components such as Menu, Tabs, TableView, and many others support rendering elements as links that perform navigation when the user interacts with them. Each component that supports link behavior accepts the href prop, which causes the component to render an <a> element. Other link DOM props such as target and download are also supported.

By default, links perform native browser navigation when they are interacted with. However, many apps and frameworks use client side routers to avoid a full page reload when navigating between pages. The Provider component can configure all React Spectrum components within it to navigate using the client side router you provide. Set this up once in the root of your app, and any React Spectrum component with the href prop will automatically navigate using your router.

Note that external links to different origins will not trigger client side routing, and will use native browser navigation. Additionally, if the link has a target other than "_self", uses the download attribute, or the user presses modifier keys such as Command or Alt to change the default behavior, browser native navigation will occur instead of client side routing.

Provider setup

The Provider component accepts a router prop, which can be set to a router object. This should include a navigate function received from your router for performing a client side navigation programmatically. It can optionally also include a useHref function that converts a router-specific href to a native HTML href, e.g. prepending a base path. The following example shows the general pattern. Framework-specific examples are shown below.

import {Provider} from '@react-spectrum/s2';
import {useNavigate, useHref} from 'your-router';

function App() {
  let navigate = useNavigate();

  return (
    <Provider router={{navigate, useHref}}>
      {/* ... */}
    </Provider>
  );
}

Router options

All React Spectrum link components accept a routerOptions prop, which is an object that is passed through to the client side router's navigate function as the second argument. This can be used to control any router-specific behaviors, such as scrolling, replacing instead of pushing to the history, etc.

<MenuItem href="/login" routerOptions={{replace: true}}>{/* ...*/}</MenuItem>

When using TypeScript, you can configure the RouterConfig type globally so that all link components have auto complete and type safety using a type provided by your router.

import type {RouterOptions} from 'your-router';

declare module '@react-spectrum/s2' {
  interface RouterConfig {
    routerOptions: RouterOptions
  }
}

React Router

The useNavigate hook from react-router-dom returns a navigate function you can pass to Provider. The useHref hook can also be provided if you're using React Router's basename option. Ensure that the component that calls useNavigate and renders Provider is inside the router component (e.g. BrowserRouter) so that it has access to React Router's internal context. The React Router <Routes> element should also be defined inside React Spectrum's <Provider> so that links inside the rendered routes have access to the router.

import {BrowserRouter, useNavigate, useHref, type NavigateOptions} from 'react-router-dom';
import {Provider} from '@react-spectrum/s2';

declare module '@react-spectrum/s2' {
  interface RouterConfig {
    routerOptions: NavigateOptions
  }
}

function App() {
  let navigate = useNavigate();

  return (
    <Provider router={{navigate, useHref}}>
      {/* Your app here... */}
      <Routes>
        <Route path="/" element={<HomePage />} />
        {/* ... */}
      </Routes>
    </Provider>
  );
}

<BrowserRouter>
  <App />
</BrowserRouter>

Next.js

App router

The useRouter hook from next/navigation returns a router object that can be used to perform navigation. Provider should be rendered from a client component at the root of each page or layout that includes React Spectrum components. You can create a new client component for this, or combine it with other top-level providers as described in the Next.js docs.

// app/provider.tsx
"use client";

import {useRouter} from 'next/navigation';
import {Provider} from '@react-spectrum/s2';

declare module '@react-spectrum/s2' {
  interface RouterConfig {
    routerOptions: NonNullable<Parameters<ReturnType<typeof useRouter>['push']>[1]>
  }
}

export function ClientProviders({children}) {
  let router = useRouter();

  return (
    <Provider router={{navigate: router.push}}>
      {children}
    </Provider>
  );
}

Then, in your page or layout server component, wrap your app in the ClientProviders component that you defined.

// app/layout.tsx
import {ClientProviders} from './provider';

export default function RootLayout({children}) {
  return (
    <html>
      <body>
        <ClientProviders>{children}</ClientProviders>
      </body>
    </html>
  );
}

If you are using the Next.js basePath setting, you'll need to configure an environment variable to access it. Then, provide a custom useHref function to prepend it to the href for all links.

// next.config.js
const basePath = '...';
const nextConfig = {
  basePath,
  env: {
    BASE_PATH: basePath
  }
};

// app/provider.tsx
// ...

export function ClientProviders({children}) {
  let router = useRouter();
  let useHref = (href: string) => process.env.BASE_PATH + href;

  return (
    <Provider router={{navigate: router.push, useHref}}>
      {children}
    </Provider>
  );
}

Pages router

The useRouter hook from next/router returns a router object that can be used to perform navigation. Provider should be rendered at the root of each page that includes React Spectrum components, or in pages/_app.tsx to add it to all pages.

// pages/_app.tsx
import type {AppProps} from 'next/app';
import {useRouter, type NextRouter} from 'next/router';
import {Provider} from '@react-spectrum/s2';

declare module '@react-spectrum/s2' {
  interface RouterConfig {
    routerOptions: NonNullable<Parameters<NextRouter['push']>[2]>
  }
}

export default function MyApp({Component, pageProps}: AppProps) {
  let router = useRouter();

  return (
    <Provider 
      router={{
        navigate: (href, opts) => router.push(href, undefined, opts),
      }}>
      <Component {...pageProps} />
    </Provider>
  );
}

When using the basePath configuration option, provide a useHref option to the router passed to Provider to prepend it to links automatically.

// pages/_app.tsx
// ...

export default function MyApp({Component, pageProps}: AppProps) {
  let router = useRouter();

  return (
    <Provider 
      router={{
        navigate: (href, opts) => router.push(href, undefined, opts),
        useHref: (href: string) => router.basePath + href
      }}>
      <Component {...pageProps} />
    </Provider>
  );
}

Remix

Remix uses React Router under the hood, so the same useNavigate and useHref hooks described above also work in Remix apps. Provider should be rendered at the root of each page that includes React Spectrum components, or in app/root.tsx to add it to all pages. See the Remix docs for more details.

// app/root.tsx
import {useNavigate, useHref, Outlet} from '@remix-run/react';
import type {NavigateOptions} from 'react-router-dom';
import {Provider} from '@react-spectrum/s2';

declare module '@react-spectrum/s2' {
  interface RouterConfig {
    routerOptions: NavigateOptions
  }
}

export default function App() {
  let navigate = useNavigate();

  return (
    <html lang="en">
      <head>
        {/* ... */}
      </head>
      <body>
        <Provider router={{navigate, useHref}}>
          <Outlet />
        </Provider>
        {/* ... */}
      </body>
    </html>
  );
}

TanStack Router

To use TanStack Router with React Spectrum, use the createLink function to wrap each React Spectrum component as a link. RouterProvider is not needed.

// src/Link.tsx
import {createLink} from '@tanstack/react-router';
import {Link as SpectrumLink, MenuItem} from '@react-spectrum/s2';

export const Link = createLink(SpectrumLink);
export const MenuItemLink = createLink(MenuItem);

In your app, use these components instead of importing directly from @react-spectrum/s2.