Modular Routing in React

In a React + React Router environment, routing configuration is a one-to-one mapping between a route and that route's display elements.

Here's a basic example:

<Route exact path='/' component={Home} />
<Route exact path='/drafts' component={DraftListing} />
<Route path='/drafts/:draftId' component={DraftUpdate} />

The above approach is suitable for simple applications, but, for complex ones, it's not really ideal.

Complex applications are usually composed of several modules. Each module is then composed of several components. If this is the application's structure, it is just reasonable for the routing model to follow the same structure, right?

Well, that's just what we're going to do! In this post, let's look at implementing modular routing in React.

We're doing this in 3 steps:

Setup a theoretical application and identify its modules and components
Implement a regular routing model for the said application
Transform the regular routing model into a modular one

Let's start!

The Application, the Modules, and the Components

Let's say we're building a blog-writing application and we have decided to implement the ff. modules:

Post Management
Draft Management

Given the above modules, we'll probably design the routing map like this:

Module	Route
Post Management	/posts
Draft Management	/drafts

Looking at the above routings, it seems like we're only going to have 3 components directly representing each of our main modules. But, we all know that these modules are still going to be composed of one or more components.

In fact, we can even argue that these modules are "smaller applications" themselves. For instance, Post Management should also have a route navigating to the Update Post component. Draft Management should have this behavior as well (navigate to the Update Draft component).

So, what do we do now? We "push up" the concept of modules and identify the actual components of the application.

Here's the new routing map but with an added Component column.

Module	Component	Route
Post Management	Post Listing	/posts
	Update Post	/posts/:postId
Draft Management	Draft Listing	/drafts
	Update Draft	/drafts/:draftId

The Regular Routing Approach

Now, we have identified the modules and components for our application. Let's go ahead and implement them!

Create A New React App First

Of course, the first step is to create a brand new React application.

npx create-react-app reactjs-module-based-routing
cd reactjs-module-based-routing

Then, we'll install the React Router for Web Applications library since we're building a web application.

npm install --save react-router-dom

For simplicity, we remove all of the other files under the /src directory.

Then, we create a new index.js file:

import React from 'react';
import ReactDOM from 'react-dom';

import App from './App';

ReactDOM.render(
  <React.StrictMode>
    <App />
  </React.StrictMode>,
  document.getElementById('root')
);

And a new App.js as well:

function App() {
  return (
    <div>

    </div>
  );
}

export default App;

Check out the code at this point here.

Create The Components

For better maintainability, the components should be grouped by their module. So, we'll have one directory per module and each of these directories will only contain the components relevant to their respective module.

Just to recap, we'll need to create the components:

Draft Listing
Draft Update
Post Listing
Post Update

Lastly, we'll need to create a Home component as well just so we can render a homepage.

For the Draft and Post Update components, we will use the useParams function from react-router-dom to get the draft or post ID passed in the URL.

Here's how the Draft Update component looks like:

import { useParams } from 'react-router-dom';

function DraftUpdate() {
    let { draftId } = useParams();

    return (
        <h1>This is Draft Update: {draftId}</h1>
    );
}

export default DraftUpdate;

For the Draft and Post Listing components, we will use the Link component from react-router-dom to render links to fake drafts or posts.

Here's how the Draft Listing component looks like:

import { Link } from 'react-router-dom';

function DraftListing() {
    return (
        <div>
            <h1>This is Draft Listing</h1>
            <ul>
                <li><Link to='/drafts/1'>Draft 1</Link></li>
                <li><Link to='/drafts/2'>Draft 2</Link></li>
            </ul>
        </div>
    );
}

export default DraftListing;

You can check out how the code looks like at this point here.

Create The Initial Routing

Now, onto the actual routing. We'll need to add the ff. code to the App component:

<BrowserRouter>
  <nav>
    <ul>
      <li><Link to='/'>Home</Link></li>
      <li><Link to='/drafts'>Drafts</Link></li>
      <li><Link to='/posts'>Posts</Link></li>
    </ul>
  </nav>
  <Switch>
    <Route exact path='/' component={Home} />
    <Route exact path='/drafts' component={DraftListing} />
    <Route exact path='/posts' component={PostListing} />
  </Switch>
</BrowserRouter>

In the updated App code, we now have a navigation section, and the routes to the Homepage, Draft Listing, and Post Listing have been defined.

Now, how should we add the routes to the draft and post update components?

We can do this by updating the Switch section of the App component code:

<Switch>
  <Route exact path='/' component={Home} />
  <Route exact path='/drafts' component={DraftListing} />
  <Route path='/drafts/:draftId' component={DraftUpdate} />
  <Route exact path='/posts' component={PostListing} />
  <Route path='/posts/:postId' component={PostUpdate} />
</Switch>

Technically, the above approach will already work. But, there's actually a couple of issues here:

The references to the route names are scattered across the files which makes the project hard to maintain. For example, the path drafts can be found in both the App and DraftListing components. If we want to change this path, we'd have to update both files.
The routing for the Draft Management and Post Management module are mixed up together in one file. Essentially defeating the purpose of defining modules in the first place.

Before moving to the next section, you can check out what the code looks like at this point here.

Transforming to Modular Routing

To address the issues I mentioned, we have to consider one very important thing:

Modules should be stand-alone.

Modules should be treated as smaller applications inside a larger one. They have to be in charge of everything related to them and that includes routing. This means that we should detach a module's routing configuration from the App component and place the configuration inside its respective module.

To do this, we need to introduce Module Routers.

Module Routers

A module router, as its name suggests, handles all the routing for a module. For this example, Module Routers are special components.

Before creating the module router we first need to update the current routing configuration.

In the App component, instead of directly specifying the routes to the Draft Management components, we now do this:

// From these
<Switch>
    <Route exact path='/drafts' component={DraftListing} />
    <Route path='/drafts/:draftId' component={DraftUpdate} />
</Switch>

// To these
<Switch>
  <Route path='/drafts' component={DraftRouter} />
</Switch>

So, what we're doing here is:

All routing that starts with the path /drafts will be handled by the DraftRouter

We then create the actual DraftRouter component. It looks like this:

function DraftRouter() {
    let { path } = useRouteMatch();

    return (
        <div>
            <strong>You are in draft management</strong>
            <Switch>
                <Route exact path={path}>
                    <DraftListing modulePath={path} />
                </Route>
                <Route path={`${path}/:draftId`} component={DraftUpdate} />
            </Switch>
        </div>
    );
}

Here's what's happening inside the DraftRouter:

We use the useRouteMatch function to get the current route path. This way, we don't have to hardcode the phrase drafts and it will only be defined in the App component.
We then defined a couple of sub-routes. If we received only the /drafts path, we'll render the DraftListing component. If we received the draft ID path, we render the DraftUpdate component.

Additionally, you may have noticed the modulePath property of the DraftListing component. This is because, at this point, we've updated the DraftListing component to this:

function DraftListing(props) {
    return (
        <div>
            <h1>This is Draft Listing</h1>
            <ul>
                <li><Link to={`${props.modulePath}/1`}>Draft 1</Link></li>
                <li><Link to={`${props.modulePath}/2`}>Draft 2</Link></li>
            </ul>
        </div>
    );
}

As you can see, we used the modulePath property to dynamically inject the /drafts path. There's no need to hardcode that path in this component as well.

I've also updated the Post Management module to follow this approach.

To check out the final state of the code, click here.

Summary

So, that's it! We've successfully implemented modular routing in React.

At this stage, our src directory looks like this:

With this approach, we can now enjoy the ff. benefits:

If we need to change a module's root path, we just need to change it in one place, in the App component.
If we need to remove/disable a module, we can simply remove its routing configuration from the App component.
The routes are easier to maintain since each module has its own configuration.

Anyway, I hoped you learned something new from me today. Let me know your thoughts in the comments!

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Modular Routing in React

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