Detect Route Change with react-router

React Router is a popular library used for routing in React applications. It provides a powerful way to handle navigation and rendering of different components based on the current URL. However, there may be scenarios where you need to detect when the route changes in order to perform certain actions or update the UI accordingly.

In this blog post, we will explore different methods to detect route changes with react-router and provide code snippets for each solution.

Solution 1: Using the useHistory hook

The useHistory hook provided by react-router allows us to access the history object, which contains information about the current location and provides methods for navigation. We can use this hook to listen for route changes by adding a listener to the history object.

{`import { useEffect } from 'react';
import { useHistory } from 'react-router-dom';

const MyComponent = () => {
  const history = useHistory();

  useEffect(() => {
    const unlisten = history.listen(() => {
      // Route change logic here
      console.log('Route changed!');
    });

    return () => {
      unlisten();
    };
  }, [history]);

  return (
    // Component JSX
  );
};

export default MyComponent;`}

Solution 2: Using the useLocation hook

The useLocation hook provided by react-router returns the current location object, which contains information about the current URL. We can use this hook to detect route changes by comparing the current location with the previous one.

{`import { useEffect, useRef } from 'react';
import { useLocation } from 'react-router-dom';

const MyComponent = () => {
  const location = useLocation();
  const prevLocation = useRef(location);

  useEffect(() => {
    if (prevLocation.current.pathname !== location.pathname) {
      // Route change logic here
      console.log('Route changed!');
    }

    prevLocation.current = location;
  }, [location]);

  return (
    // Component JSX
  );
};

export default MyComponent;`}

These are two common solutions to detect route changes with react-router. Depending on your specific use case, you can choose the one that suits your needs the best.

Remember to import the necessary hooks from the ‘react-router-dom’ package and wrap your component with a Router component to enable routing in your application.

That’s it! Now you can easily detect route changes in your React application using react-router. Happy coding!