145

I have the following:

  <Route name="app" path="/" handler={App}>
    <Route name="dashboards" path="dashboards" handler={Dashboard}>
      <Route name="exploreDashboard" path="exploreDashboard" handler={ExploreDashboard} />
      <Route name="searchDashboard" path="searchDashboard" handler={SearchDashboard} />
      <DefaultRoute handler={DashboardExplain} />
    </Route>
    <DefaultRoute handler={SearchDashboard} />
  </Route>

When using the DefaultRoute, SearchDashboard renders incorrectly since any *Dashboard needs to rendered within Dashboard.

I would like for my DefaultRoute within the "app" Route to point to the Route "searchDashboard". Is this something that I can do with React Router, or should I use normal Javascript (for a page redirect) for this?

Basically, if the user goes to the home page I want to send them instead to the search dashboard. So I guess I'm looking for a React Router feature equivalent to window.location.replace("mygreathostname.com/#/dashboards/searchDashboard");

2
  • 1
    Have your tried of using Redirect instead of DefaultRoute ?<Redirect from="/" to="searchDashboard" /> Commented Apr 10, 2015 at 12:07
  • @JonatanLundqvistMedén that's exactly what I was looking for, thank you! Write it as an answer and I'll mark it as correct. Sorry for the delayed response. Commented Apr 17, 2015 at 22:19

19 Answers 19

195

You can use Redirect instead of DefaultRoute

<Redirect from="/" to="searchDashboard" />

Update 2019-08-09 to avoid problem with refresh use this instead, thanks to Ogglas

<Redirect exact from="/" to="searchDashboard" />

Source:

https://stackoverflow.com/a/43958016/3850405

7
  • 6
    is it just me, or when using this to hit a deep url directly, I always get redirected to the "to" url, instead of the route I'm trying to hit?
    – Pablote
    Commented Apr 17, 2017 at 18:47
  • Should be noticed that if you are doing some redirection like from='/a' to='/a/:id', you will need to use <Switch> to include your <Redirect> and <Route> component from react-router. Details see doc
    – Kulbear
    Commented May 24, 2017 at 9:08
  • 1
    @Kulbear I had the same problem. Doing what Ogglas said in his answer worked.
    – Alan P.
    Commented Jun 22, 2017 at 23:46
  • 2
    To make it work you most likely need to put this route last or do this <Redirect exact from="/" to="/adaptation" /> Commented Apr 27, 2019 at 19:27
  • It's easy to oversee it, so I repeat: The important part of DarkWalker's Redirect rule is the exact flag. The acceptet answer is missing that, so it matches [almost] any route.
    – dube
    Commented May 15, 2019 at 11:32
97

Update for version 6.4.5 to 6.8.1 <:

Use replace={true} for Navigate component.

<Routes>
  <Route path="/" element={<Navigate to="/searchDashboard" replace={true} />}>
    <Route path="searchDashboard" element={<SearchDashboard/>} />
    <Route
      path="*"
      element={<Navigate to="/" replace={true} />}
    />
  </Route>
</Routes>

https://reactrouter.com/en/6.4.5/components/navigate https://reactrouter.com/en/6.8.1/components/navigate

Thanks to @vicky for pointing this out in comments.

Update:

For v6 you can do it like this with Navigate. You can use a "No Match" Route to handle "no match" cases.

<Routes>
  <Route path="/" element={<Navigate to="/searchDashboard" />}>
    <Route path="searchDashboard" element={<SearchDashboard/>} />
    <Route
      path="*"
      element={<Navigate to="/" />}
    />
  </Route>
</Routes>

https://reactrouter.com/docs/en/v6/getting-started/tutorial#adding-a-no-match-route

https://stackoverflow.com/a/69872699/3850405

Original:

The problem with using <Redirect from="/" to="searchDashboard" /> is if you have a different URL, say /indexDashboard and the user hits refresh or gets a URL sent to them, the user will be redirected to /searchDashboard anyway.

If you wan't users to be able to refresh the site or send URLs use this:

<Route exact path="/" render={() => (
    <Redirect to="/searchDashboard"/>
)}/>

Use this if searchDashboard is behind login:

<Route exact path="/" render={() => (
  loggedIn ? (
    <Redirect to="/searchDashboard"/>
  ) : (
    <Redirect to="/login"/>
  )
)}/>
3
  • It should be use replace in navigate otherwise there should be back event not work. <Route path='/' element={<Navigate replace to="appointments-history" />}/>
    – vicky
    Commented Feb 18, 2023 at 10:04
  • @vicky Updated the answer with replace={true}
    – Ogglas
    Commented Feb 18, 2023 at 14:53
  • Just FYI your update for react-router@6 is incorrect, this code won't work. Navigate doesn't render an Outlet so none of the nested routes are reachable.
    – Drew Reese
    Commented Sep 30, 2023 at 5:32
38

I was incorrectly trying to create a default path with:

<IndexRoute component={DefaultComponent} />
<Route path="/default-path" component={DefaultComponent} />

But this creates two different paths that render the same component. Not only is this pointless, but it can cause glitches in your UI, i.e., when you are styling <Link/> elements based on this.history.isActive().

The right way to create a default route (that is not the index route) is to use <IndexRedirect/>:

<IndexRedirect to="/default-path" />
<Route path="/default-path" component={DefaultComponent} />

This is based on react-router 1.0.0. See https://github.com/rackt/react-router/blob/master/modules/IndexRedirect.js.

4
  • What's the point of having a Route to something that is already handled by your IndexRoute? Commented Dec 4, 2015 at 3:52
  • 1
    There is no point, and I edited my answer to make it clear I was not advocating that.
    – Seth
    Commented Dec 4, 2015 at 3:58
  • This is what I've been doing as well, but I'd love a solution that serves up a component (my homepage) at / instead of having to redirect to e.g. /home.
    – ericsoco
    Commented Aug 8, 2016 at 23:39
  • Looks like I'm looking for <IndexRoute> after all. Sorry for the noise. stackoverflow.com/questions/32706913/… github.com/reactjs/react-router/blob/master/docs/guides/…
    – ericsoco
    Commented Aug 8, 2016 at 23:42
14

Since V6 was released recently, the accepted answer won't work since Redirect no more exists in V6. Consider using Navigate.

 <Route path="/" element={<Navigate to="/searchDashboard" />} />

Ref:- V6 docs

13

2020:

Instead of using Redirect, simply add multiple routes in the path.

Example:

<Route exact path={["/","/defaultPath"]} component={searchDashboard} />

UPDATE 2023

This doesn't work in v6, so use this instead

<Route exact path="/" element={searchDashboard} />
<Route exact path="/defaultPath" element={searchDashboard} />
1
  • 1
    Hey are you sure there are square brackets there? Because I was getting the error: "Uncaught TypeError: meta.relativePath.startsWith is not a function" so when I removed the square brackets, it works fine, like this: <Route exact path={"/","/defaultPath"} component={searchDashboard} /> Commented Jan 9, 2022 at 10:30
12

Jonathan's answer didn't seem to work for me. I'm using React v0.14.0 and React Router v1.0.0-rc3. This did:

<IndexRoute component={Home}/>.

So in Matthew's Case, I believe he'd want:

<IndexRoute component={SearchDashboard}/>.

Source: https://github.com/rackt/react-router/blob/master/docs/guides/advanced/ComponentLifecycle.md

2
  • Thanks for the share. I was using React v0.13 and the version of React-Router for that, so a pre-1.0/rc version. Hope this helps others! Commented Oct 14, 2015 at 14:59
  • I think this makes you lose the context. SearchDashboard will be the component you will see when you arrive at the homepage, but not the Dashboard component that is wrapping it if you go directly to /dashboard/searchDashboard. React-router dynamically builds up a hierarchy of nested components based on the routes matched by the URL, so I think you really do need a redirect here. Commented Jan 19, 2016 at 12:34
8

May 2022

  1. Import Navigate
import { Routes, Route, Navigate } from 'react-router-dom';
  1. Add
<Route path="/" element={<Navigate replace to="/home" />} />

For example:

import React from 'react';
import { Routes, Route, Navigate } from 'react-router-dom';

import Home from './pages/Home';
import Login from './pages/Login';

const Main = () => {
    return (
        <Routes>
            <Route path="/" element={<Navigate replace to="/home" />} />
            <Route path='home' element={<Home />}></Route>
            <Route path='login' element={<Login />}></Route>
        </Routes>
    );
}

export default Main;
  1. Done!
7
import { Route, Redirect } from "react-router-dom";

class App extends Component {
  render() {
    return (
      <div>
        <Route path='/'>
          <Redirect to="/something" />
        </Route>
//rest of code here

this will make it so that when you load up the server on local host it will re direct you to /something

4

I ran into a similar issue; I wanted a default route handler if none of the route handler matched.

My solutions is to use a wildcard as the path value. ie Also make sure it is the last entry in your routes definition.

<Route path="/" component={App} >
    <IndexRoute component={HomePage} />
    <Route path="about" component={AboutPage} />
    <Route path="home" component={HomePage} />
    <Route path="*" component={HomePage} />
</Route>
4

For those coming into 2017, this is the new solution with IndexRedirect:

<Route path="/" component={App}>
  <IndexRedirect to="/welcome" />
  <Route path="welcome" component={Welcome} />
  <Route path="about" component={About} />
</Route>
0
2
 <Route name="app" path="/" handler={App}>
    <Route name="dashboards" path="dashboards" handler={Dashboard}>
      <Route name="exploreDashboard" path="exploreDashboard" handler={ExploreDashboard} />
      <Route name="searchDashboard" path="searchDashboard" handler={SearchDashboard} />
      <DefaultRoute handler={DashboardExplain} />
    </Route>
    <Redirect from="/*" to="/" />
  </Route>
2
1

The preferred method is to use the react router IndexRoutes component

You use it like this (taken from the react router docs linked above):

<Route path="/" component={App}>
    <IndexRedirect to="/welcome" />
    <Route path="welcome" component={Welcome} />
    <Route path="about" component={About} />
</Route>
1
  • The linked page is giving 404 now Commented Jan 9, 2022 at 10:20
1

Here is how I do it-

<Router>
  <div className="App">
    <Navbar />
    <TabBar />
    <div className="content">
      <Route exact path={["/default", "/"]}> //Imp
        <DefStuff />
      </Route>
      <Route exact path="/otherpage">
        <Otherstuff />
      </Route>
      <Redirect to="/defult" /> //Imp
    </div>
  </div>
</Router>
1

Use:

<Route path="/" element={<Navigate replace to="/expenses" />} />

In context:

import { BrowserRouter, Routes, Route, Navigate } from "react-router-dom";

<BrowserRouter>
  <Routes>
    <Route element={<App />}>
      <Route path="/expenses" element={<Expenses />} />
      <Route path="/invoices" element={<Invoices />} />
    </Route>
    <Route path="/" element={<Navigate replace to="/expenses" />} />
  </Routes>
</BrowserRouter>
1

Firstly you need to install:

npm install react-router-dom;

Then you need to use your App.js (in your case it can be different) and do the modification below. In this case I selected the Redirect to get proper rendering process.

import { BrowserRouter as Router, Route, Switch, Redirect } from "react-router-dom";

<Router>
        <Suspense fallback={<Loading />}>
          <Switch>
            <Route exact path="/">
              <Redirect to="/Home" component={Routes.HomePage}/>
            </Route>
            <Route exact path="/Biz" component={Routes.Biz} />
          </Switch>
        </Suspense>
      </Router>

If you successfully do the modification above, you can see the redirect URL is on your browser path and rendering process also working properly according to their component.

Some time ago, we had an opportunity to use the component named "DefaultRoute" in the react routing.

Now, it's a deprecated method, and it’s not so popular to use it. You can create the custom route named default or whatever, but still, it’s not how we do it in modern React.js development.

It’s just because using the "DefaultRoute" route, we can cause some rendering problems, and it's the thing that we definitely would like to avoid.

0

You use it like this to redirect on a particular URL and render component after redirecting from old-router to new-router.

<Route path="/old-router">
  <Redirect exact to="/new-router"/>
  <Route path="/new-router" component={NewRouterType}/>
</Route>
0

Place the following code after all the exact routes. If none of them matches the current route, it'll render the default route.

<Route path="*" element={<DefaultComponent />} />
0

Redirect to /Home when user goes to / (default Route):

 <Route path="/" element={<Navigate to="/Home" />} />

Use the Navigate element to redirect the user to /Home every time they go to the / route.

0

To create a default child route , here is what worked for me :

 import * as React from "react";
 import * as ReactDOM from "react-dom";
 import {
 createBrowserRouter,
 RouterProvider,
} from "react-router-dom";


const router = createBrowserRouter([
  {
    path: "/",
    element: <RootComponentWithOutlet />,
    
    children: [
    {
     path: "team",
    element: <Team />,
   
     },
    {
     path: "aboutus",
    element: <AboutUs/>,
   
     },
    {
     path: "",
    element: <IndexPageContent/>,
   
     },
   ],
 },
]);

ReactDOM.createRoot(document.getElementById("root")).render(
  <RouterProvider router={router} />
);

This will render IndexPageContent , at / route .

ref:

https://reactrouter.com/en/main/routers/create-browser-router

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