ReactJS Bootstrap Navbar and Routing not working together
I am trying to create a simple Webapp using ReactJS, and I wanted to use the Navbar provided by React-Bootstrap.
I created a Navigation.js file containing a class Navigation to separate the Navbar and the Routing from the App.js file. However, both parts do not seem to work. When I load the page, it is just empty, there is no Navbar. Can anyone spot a mistake?
Navigation.js:
import React, { Component } from 'react';
import { Navbar, Nav, Form, FormControl, Button, NavItem } from 'react-bootstrap';
import { Switch, Route } from 'react-router-dom';
import { Home } from './Page';
class Navigation extends Component {
render() {
return (
<div>
<div>
<Navbar>
<Navbar.Brand href="/">React-Bootstrap</Navbar.Brand>
<Navbar.Collapse>
<Nav className="mr-auto">
<NavItem eventkey={1} href="/">
<Nav.Link href="/">Home</Nav.Link>
</NavItem>
</Nav>
<Form inline>
<FormControl type="text" placeholder="Search" className="mr-sm-2" />
<Button variant="outline-success">Search</Button>
</Form>
</Navbar.Collapse>
</Navbar>
</div>
<div>
<Switch>
<Route exact path='/' component={Home} />
<Route render={function () {
return <p>Not found</p>
}} />
</Switch>
</div>
</div>
);
}
}
export default Navigation;
App.js:
import React, { Component } from 'react';
import Navigation from './components/routing/Navigation';
class App extends Component {
render() {
return (
<div id="App">
<Navigation />
</div>
);
}
}
export default App;
I tried using a NavItem containing a LinkContainer from react-router-bootstrap already, which led to the same result.
Just for completeness, Page.js:
import React, { Component } from 'react';
import { Link } from 'react-router-dom';
export const Page = ({ title }) => (
<div className="App">
<div className="App-header">
<h2>{title}</h2>
</div>
<p className="App-intro">
This is the {title} page.
</p>
<p>
<Link to="/">Home</Link>
</p>
<p>
<Link to="/about">About</Link>
</p>
<p>
<Link to="/settings">Settings</Link>
</p>
</div>
);
export const About = (props) => (
<Page title="About"/>
);
export const Settings = (props) => (
<Page title="Settings"/>
);
export const Home = (props) => (
<Page title="Home"/>
);
Solution 1:
First of all, in your snippets it doesn't seem like you're wrapping your code in a Router, so you should make sure that you're doing that inside App or in ReactDOM.render:
import { BrowserRouter } from 'react-router-dom';
ReactDOM.render(
<BrowserRouter>
<App />
</BrowserRouter>,
rootElement
);
Next, your specific problem is that you're rendering react-bootstrap's Nav.Link instead of react-router's Link component, so the router is not picking up your route changes. Fortunately, react-bootstrap provides a render prop in most of its components to specify which component or element you want to render if you don't want the default. Switch to something like this:
import { Switch, Route, Link } from 'react-router-dom';
class Navigation extends Component {
render() {
return (
<div>
<div>
<Navbar>
<Navbar.Brand as={Link} to="/" >React-Bootstrap</Navbar.Brand>
<Navbar.Collapse>
<Nav className="mr-auto">
<NavItem eventkey={1} href="/">
<Nav.Link as={Link} to="/" >Home</Nav.Link>
</NavItem>
</Nav>
<Form inline>
<FormControl type="text" placeholder="Search" className="mr-sm-2" />
<Button variant="outline-success">Search</Button>
</Form>
</Navbar.Collapse>
</Navbar>
</div>
<div>
<Switch>
<Route exact path='/' component={Home} />
<Route render={function () {
return <p>Not found</p>
}} />
</Switch>
</div>
</div>
);
}
}
Solution 2:
For those who have a problem with styling Link component from react-router-dom in react-bootstrap navbar, simply add className="nav-link", like this:
<Link to="/" className="nav-link">Home</Link>
instead of
<Nav.Link href="/">Home</Nav.Link>
Solution 3:
I hope I'm no late to help some other people trying to solve this.
You can use the NavLink, instead of as={Link}. It will render with the same behavior of Link, but will "watch" the router URL to define which link is indeed active:
<Nav defaultActiveKey="/bills" as="ul">
<Nav.Item as="li">
<Nav.Link as={NavLink} to="/bills">Dividas</Nav.Link>
</Nav.Item>
<Nav.Item as="li">
<Nav.Link as={NavLink} to="/other">Em construção</Nav.Link>
</Nav.Item>
</Nav>
Solution 4:
import ReactDOM from 'react-dom';
import { BrowserRouter } from 'react-router-dom';
ReactDOM.render(
<BrowserRouter>
<App />
</BrowserRouter>,
document.getElementById('root')
);
and Navbar.js:
import React from 'react';
import {Container,Navbar,Nav,NavItem } from 'react-bootstrap';
import {Link} from 'react-router-dom';
<Nav className="ml-auto">
<NavItem> <Link className="nav-link" to="/">Home</Link> </NavItem>
<NavItem> <Link className="nav-link" to="/about">About</Link> </NavItem>
<NavItem> <Link className="nav-link" to="/contact">Contact</Link> </NavItem>
</Nav>
This resolved the: <Link> outside a <Router> error for me.
Solution 5:
Having found myself with a project of non-trivial size, and one that already had jQuery as a dependency I was able to gracefully solve the react-router / react-bootstrap mismatch with an event listener on the document.
This has one advantage over other solutions in that it requires no changes to the current markup. However, one may need to write some additional logic guarding the history.push call depending on needs. One may also need to expand this to guard for the target attribute, e.g. target="_blank".
If jQuery is not desired, one may be able to write a vanilla JS implementation with document.addEventListener without much additional effort.
// react-router@5
// usage of history may vary depending on version
import { Router } from 'react-router-dom';
import { createBrowserHistory } from 'history';
const history = createBrowserHistory();
// IIFE scoping jQuery for us
(($) => {
// Wait for document ready
$(() => {
$(document).on('click', '[href]', (event) => {
// Only target links targeting our application's origin
if (event.currentTarget.href.indexOf(window.location.origin) === 0) {
// Prevent standard browser navigation
event.preventDefault();
const path = event.currentTarget.href.slice(window.location.origin.length);
history.push(path);
}
});
});
})(jQuery);
const Routing = (props) => (
<Router history={ history }>
...
</Router>
);