Detecting user leaving page with react-router

I want my ReactJS app to notify a user when navigating away from a specific page. Specifically a popup message that reminds him/her to do an action:

"Changes are saved, but not published yet. Do that now?"

Should i trigger this on react-router globally, or is this something that can be done from within the react page / component?

I havent found anything on the latter, and i'd rather avoid the first. Unless its the norm of course, but that makes me wonder how to do such a thing without having to add code to every other possible page the user can go to..

Any insights welcome, thanks!

Solution 1:

react-router v4 introduces a new way to block navigation using Prompt. Just add this to the component that you would like to block:

import { Prompt } from 'react-router'

const MyComponent = () => (
  <>
    <Prompt
      when={shouldBlockNavigation}
      message='You have unsaved changes, are you sure you want to leave?'
    />
    {/* Component JSX */}
  </>
)

This will block any routing, but not page refresh or closing. To block that, you'll need to add this (updating as needed with the appropriate React lifecycle):

componentDidUpdate = () => {
  if (shouldBlockNavigation) {
    window.onbeforeunload = () => true
  } else {
    window.onbeforeunload = undefined
  }
}

onbeforeunload has various support by browsers.

Solution 2:

In react-router v2.4.0 or above and before v4 there are several options

1. Add function onLeave for Route

 <Route
      path="/home"
      onEnter={ auth }
      onLeave={ showConfirm }
      component={ Home }
    >
    

2. Use function setRouteLeaveHook for componentDidMount

You can prevent a transition from happening or prompt the user before leaving a route with a leave hook.

const Home = withRouter(
  React.createClass({

    componentDidMount() {
      this.props.router.setRouteLeaveHook(this.props.route, this.routerWillLeave)
    },

    routerWillLeave(nextLocation) {
      // return false to prevent a transition w/o prompting the user,
      // or return a string to allow the user to decide:
      // return `null` or nothing to let other hooks to be executed
      //
      // NOTE: if you return true, other hooks will not be executed!
      if (!this.state.isSaved)
        return 'Your work is not saved! Are you sure you want to leave?'
    },

    // ...

  })
)

Note that this example makes use of the withRouter higher-order component introduced in v2.4.0.

However these solution doesn't quite work perfectly when changing the route in URL manually

In the sense that

• we see the Confirmation - ok
• contain of page doesn't reload - ok
• URL doesn't changes - not okay

For react-router v4 using Prompt or custom history:

However in react-router v4 , its rather easier to implement with the help of Prompt from'react-router

According to the documentation

Prompt

Used to prompt the user before navigating away from a page. When your application enters a state that should prevent the user from navigating away (like a form is half-filled out), render a <Prompt>.

import { Prompt } from 'react-router'

<Prompt
  when={formIsHalfFilledOut}
  message="Are you sure you want to leave?"
/>

message: string

The message to prompt the user with when they try to navigate away.

<Prompt message="Are you sure you want to leave?"/>

message: func

Will be called with the next location and action the user is attempting to navigate to. Return a string to show a prompt to the user or true to allow the transition.

<Prompt message={location => (
  `Are you sure you want to go to ${location.pathname}?`
)}/>

when: bool

Instead of conditionally rendering a <Prompt> behind a guard, you can always render it but pass when={true} or when={false} to prevent or allow navigation accordingly.

In your render method you simply need to add this as mentioned in the documentation according to your need.

UPDATE:

In case you would want to have a custom action to take when user is leaving page, you can make use of custom history and configure your Router like

history.js

import createBrowserHistory from 'history/createBrowserHistory'
export const history = createBrowserHistory()

... 
import { history } from 'path/to/history';
<Router history={history}>
  <App/>
</Router>

and then in your component you can make use of history.block like

import { history } from 'path/to/history';
class MyComponent extends React.Component {
   componentDidMount() {
      this.unblock = history.block(targetLocation => {
           // take your action here     
           return false;
      });
   }
   componentWillUnmount() {
      this.unblock();
   }
   render() {
      //component render here
   }
}