Add a new future.v7_relativeSplatPath
flag to implement a breaking bug fix to relative routing when inside a splat route. (#11087)
This fix was originally added in #10983 and was later reverted in #11078 because it was determined that a large number of existing applications were relying on the buggy behavior (see #11052)
The Bug
The buggy behavior is that without this flag, the default behavior when resolving relative paths is to ignore any splat (*
) portion of the current route path.
The Background
This decision was originally made thinking that it would make the concept of nested different sections of your apps in <Routes>
easier if relative routing would replace the current splat:
<BrowserRouter>
<Routes>
<Route path="/" element={<Home />} />
<Route path="dashboard/*" element={<Dashboard />} />
</Routes>
</BrowserRouter>
Any paths like /dashboard
, /dashboard/team
, /dashboard/projects
will match the Dashboard
route. The dashboard component itself can then render nested <Routes>
:
function Dashboard() {
return (
<div>
<h2>Dashboard</h2>
<nav>
<Link to="/">Dashboard Home</Link>
<Link to="team">Team</Link>
<Link to="projects">Projects</Link>
</nav>
<Routes>
<Route path="/" element={<DashboardHome />} />
<Route path="team" element={<DashboardTeam />} />
<Route path="projects" element={<DashboardProjects />} />
</Routes>
</div>
);
}
Now, all links and route paths are relative to the router above them. This makes code splitting and compartmentalizing your app really easy. You could render the Dashboard
as its own independent app, or embed it into your large app without making any changes to it.
The Problem
The problem is that this concept of ignoring part of a path breaks a lot of other assumptions in React Router - namely that "."
always means the current location pathname for that route. When we ignore the splat portion, we start getting invalid paths when using "."
:
function DashboardTeam() {
return <Link to=".">A broken link to the Current URL</Link>;
return <Link to="./team">A broken link to the Current URL</Link>;
}
We've also introduced an issue that we can no longer move our DashboardTeam
component around our route hierarchy easily - since it behaves differently if we're underneath a non-splat route, such as /dashboard/:widget
. Now, our "."
links will, properly point to ourself inclusive of the dynamic param value so behavior will break from it's corresponding usage in a /dashboard/*
route.
Even worse, consider a nested splat route configuration:
<BrowserRouter>
<Routes>
<Route path="dashboard">
<Route path="*" element={<Dashboard />} />
</Route>
</Routes>
</BrowserRouter>
Now, a <Link to=".">
and a <Link to="..">
inside the Dashboard
component go to the same place! That is definitely not correct!
Another common issue arose in Data Routers (and Remix) where any <Form>
should post to it's own route action
if you the user doesn't specify a form action:
let router = createBrowserRouter({
path: "/dashboard",
children: [
{
path: "*",
action: dashboardAction,
Component() {
return <Form method="post">...</Form>;
},
},
],
});
This is just a compounded issue from the above because the default location for a Form
to submit to is itself ("."
) - and if we ignore the splat portion, that now resolves to the parent route.
The Solution
If you are leveraging this behavior, it's recommended to enable the future flag, move your splat to it's own route, and leverage ../
for any links to "sibling" pages:
<BrowserRouter>
<Routes>
<Route path="dashboard">
<Route index path="*" element={<Dashboard />} />
</Route>
</Routes>
</BrowserRouter>
function Dashboard() {
return (
<div>
<h2>Dashboard</h2>
<nav>
<Link to="..">Dashboard Home</Link>
<Link to="../team">Team</Link>
<Link to="../projects">Projects</Link>
</nav>
<Routes>
<Route path="/" element={<DashboardHome />} />
<Route path="team" element={<DashboardTeam />} />
<Route path="projects" element={<DashboardProjects />} />
</Router>
</div>
);
}
This way, .
means "the full current pathname for my route" in all cases (including static, dynamic, and splat routes) and ..
always means "my parents pathname".