The present and future of Vue Router

@posva

Alicante 29 May 2019

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Eduardo

San Martin Morote

🌍 Vue core team

👨‍💻 Freelance

📍Paris

🐣 Málaga 🇪🇸

@posva

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@posva

Routing in you App

the 1st week

Routing in your App

after a year

Vue Router

const router = new Router({
  mode: 'history',
  routes: [
    { path: '/', component: Home },
    { path: '/users/:id', component: UserProfile },
  ]
})
<div>
  <router-link to="/">Home</router-link>
  <router-link :to="`/users/${this.user.id}`">
    My Profile
  </router-link>
</div>

🗂 HISTORY

🚦 ROUTER

📦 COMPONENTS

router.push('/search')
<router-view/>

🗂 HISTORy

  • Store visited URLs

  • JS ↔ URL

    • push() replace(), ...
    • listen()

🚦 ROUTER

  • Route matching​

    • ​match()
    • ​resolve()

  • Navigation

    • ​​currentRoute
    • push() replace(), ...
    • ​beforeEach(), ...

  • Creating routes

    • new Router({ routes })
    • addRoutes()

📦 COMPONENTES

<router-view/>
<router-link to="/">Home</router-link>

SPA
Routers

Three kind of routers

  • Imperative
  • Declarative
  • Configuration-based

Simple & Flexible
but Verbose

Page.js

✍️ Imperative

✅ Programmatic navigation

❌ Declarative navigation

✅ Navigation Guards

❌ Dynamic routing (add/remove routes)

Dynamic routing

router.addRoute('/some-route', options)
router.removeRoute('/some-route')

⚠️ not actual API

Reach Router

<Router>
  <Home path="/" />
  <UserProfileEdit path="/users/:id/edit" />
</Router>
<div>
  <Link to="/">Home</Link>
  <Link to={`/users/${this.user.id}/edit`} />
</div>

Reach router

Idiomatic for React

✍️ Declarative

⚠️ Programmatic navigation (in-jsx)

✅ Declarative navigation

❌ Navigation Guards

✅ Dynamic routing (add/remove routes)

 

Vue router

Decoupled:
router instance / components

✍️ Configuration-based

✅ Programmatic navigation

✅ Declarative navigation

✅ Navigation Guards

⚠️ Dynamic routing (add/remove routes)

 

The
Good PARTS

📦 router-view
<router-view/>
  • Dynamically render current view
  • Pass params as props
$route
📦 router-link
  • Resolve target location
  • Render an anchor tag with link
  • Handles click event
  • Applies active classes
<router-link to="/">Home</router-link>
<router-link :to="{ name: 'User', params: {id: '2'}}">...</router-link>
$route
$router
this.$route
{
  path: '/users/2',
  name: 'UserProfile',
  query: {},
  params: { id: '2' },
  meta: {}
}
<p>User: {{ $route.params.id }}</p>
created () {
  fetch(`/api/users/${this.$route.params.id}`)
    .then(/* ... */)
}
this.$route
created () {
  if (someCondition) {
    this.$router.push('/other-route')
  }
}
this.$router
const router = new Router({
  mode: 'history',
  routes: [
    { path: '/', component: Home },
    { path: '/users/:id', component: UserProfile },
  ]
})

Global Guards

router.beforeEach((to, from, next) => {
  // verify roles based on `to`
  // ...

  // we can only call `next` once
  if (!isLoggedIn) next('/login') // redirect to login
  else if (!isAuthorized) next(false) // abort
  else next() // allow navigation
})

Per-route Guards

{
  path: '/admin',
  component: AdminPanel,
  beforeEnter (to, from, next) {
    if (isAdmin) next()
    else next(false)
  },
}

in-component guards

export default {
  name: 'AdminPanel',

  data: () => ({ adminInfo: null }),

  async beforeRouteEnter (to, from, next) {
    const adminInfo = await getAdminInfo()
    next(vm => {
      vm.adminInfo = adminInfo
    })
  },
}

beforeEach

beforeEnter

beforeRouteEnter

next()
next(false)

/posts ➡️ /admin

/posts

Admin.vue

beforeEnter

beforeRouteEnter

next()

/posts ➡️ /admin

await Admin()

The
Sad PARTS

No clear Division of responsibilities

History

Router

router.beforeEach
function beforeEach(guard: NavigationGuard): ListenerRemover {
  this.beforeGuards.push(guard)
  return () => {
    const i = this.beforeGuards.indexOf(guard)
    if (i > -1) this.beforeGuards.splice(i, 1)
  }
}
router.push
function push (location, onComplete, onAbort) {
  this.history.push(location, onComplete, onAbort)
}
history.push
function push (location, onComplete, onAbort) {
  const route = this.router.match(location, this.currentLocation)

  try {  
    // run navigation guards queue
    // ...

    // change the url in the browser (HTML5)
    window.history.pushState({}, '', route.fullPath)
    onComplete(route)
  } catch (error) {
    // handle the error
    // ...
    onAbort(error)
  }
}

⚠️ Simplified version

🗂 History

  • Base: +300 LoC
  • HTML5: 70 LoC
  • Hash: 130 LoC

🚦 Router

  • Router Class: ~200 LoC
  • Matcher: ~180 LoC

😨 Complex codebase

🙂 Simple codebase

No clear Division of responsibilities

  • Harder to fix bugs
  • Harder to add features
  • Harder to contribute
  • Harder to extend

Save
Vue
Router

🗂 HISTORy

  • Store visited URLs

  • JS ↔ URL

    • push() replace(), ...
    • listen()

🚦 ROUTER

  • Route matching

    • ​match()
    • ​resolve()

  • Navigation

    • ​​currentRoute
    • push() replace(), ...
    • ​beforeEach(), ...

  • Creating routes

    • new Router({ routes })
    • addRoutes()

🗂 HISTORy

  • push() replace()
  • listen()
  • URL parsing

API

  • Modify the Location
  • Parses URL
    • path
    • query
    • hash
  • Notifies when Location changes
  • Handles Encoding problems
  • Can be overloaded

Responsibilities / Expectations

🚦 ROUTER

  • Route matching

    • ​resolve()
  • Adding Route Records 
    • addRouteRecord
    • removeRouteRecord

  • Navigation

    • ​​currentRoute
    • push() replace(), ...

  • Navigation Guards

    • ​beforeEach(), ...
  • Dynamic Routing 
    • ​addRoute / removeRoute

🚦 ROUTER

🛣 Matcher

🛣 Matcher

  • Route matching

    • ​resolve()
  • Adding Route Records 
    • addRouteRecord
    • removeRouteRecord

API

  • Resolving a Router Location to a Route Record
  • Only handles the path of URL
  • Handles priority of Route Records
  • Parses/handle params

Responsibilities / Expectations

Reach Router Ranking

  • Each segment gets 4 points and then…

  • Static segments get 3 more points

  • Dynamic segments 2 more

  • Root segments 1

  • and finally wildcard segments get a 1 point penalty

  • Navigation

    • ​​currentRoute
    • push() replace()

  • Navigation Guards

    • ​beforeEach()
  • Dynamic Routing
  • Lazy loading Pages
  • In-component Guards
  • Error handlers

🚦 ROUTER

API

  • Async navigation
  • Trigger Navigation guards
  • Expose current Route Location
  • Handle redirections

Responsibilities / Expectations

Browser
Quirks

vue-router/push-state.js

reach-router/history.js

Browser Quirks

URI ENcoding Issues

Directly navigate to

/é?é=é#é​
  • URL Bar:  /é?é=é#é​
  • location.pathname: '/%C3%A9'

  • location.search: '%C3%A9=%C3%A9'

  • location.search: '#%C3%A9'
  • URL Bar:  /é?é=é#é​
  • location.pathname: '/é'

  • location.search: 'é=é'

  • location.search: '#é'
history.pushState({}, '', '/é?é=é#é​')

Cool
new
Vue
Router

The Future is in Typescript

export type RouteRecord =
  | RouteRecordSingleView
  | RouteRecordMultipleViews
  | RouteRecordRedirect
  • Easier to contribute
  • Easier to use

More Tests

  • Full unit test coverage
  • Automated Cross Browser E2E tests

Going Slowly
but Surely

Making sure we cover all cases from previous router

Router
prototype

other routers

other routers

RFCs

  • Scoped Slot API for router-link
  • Better active matching
  • Dynamic History
  • a11y improvements
  • More navigation information
  • Hooks API for router link

Vue 2 & 3

Support both versions

Vue Router

Vue Router

Vue 2

Vue 3

Patreons 🙌

patreon.com/posva

Thanks! 🖖

@posva

GitHub icon

@posva

The present and future of Vue Router

By Eduardo San Martin Morote

Made with Slides.com

The present and future of Vue Router

When we develop single-page applications, we have to use a router. Every single framework has its own router, React even has multiple ones you can choose from. And even though each framework is different and every router takes a different approach, they all share the same principles. What is behind a simple and easy-to-use API? Is it really that difficult to create your own SPA router? What are the different approaches and their advantages, caveats? Let's talk about the existing different approaches we see in SPA routers, today's Vue Router implementation and what is coming for the next versions of Vue Router

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