5 ms·

I'm with you. I'm so sick of this library. About the only thing they got right the first three times was the name of the package yet they have dragged everyone

by tbrock 10y ago

I'm with you. I'm so sick of this library. About the only thing they got right the first three times was the name of the package yet they have dragged everyone through countless iterations of regurgitated API churn to keep it instead of just creating a new one. Maintaining react-router and keeping up to date for a production site is a full time job I don't want. I realize I sound like the a whining open source leech but there is a huge opportunity for a stable library to emerge and capture mindshare here. Where is Facebook during all this? Someone needs to step up and solidify this critical react ecosystem component and it seems like it should be them. Obviously.

acemarke 10y ago
Per comments from the React devs, Facebook handles routing needs with their own internal stuff. They don't use anything like React-Router themselves, so they have no need to build or open-source something like that.
- andrewingram 10y ago
  One thing worth adding is that along with Redux, React Router has been vocally blessed as the right solution by Facebook employees. This means it occupies an unusual position within the ecosystem in that it's a de-facto standard, and fairly critical to many projects. It definitely suffers from a documentation problem (the new examples are genuinely great, but previous versions were very light on practical examples and best practices).
  - acemarke 10y ago
    Thankfully, I've never had to deal with routing in any of the applications I've worked with. (Primarily internal stuff that is true "applications in a browser", rather than stuff addressable by sub-URLs.) So, I've managed to avoid all this complexity. Wasn't until relatively recently that I even understood what client-side routing actually involves. Personally, I think that routing in general is one of the major causes of "Javascript Fatigue", and is proof that building complex software is inherently complex. I will say that despite its "de-facto standard" nature, there's certainly a number of other options out there. I keep a list of Redux-related addons and utilities, and there's a couple dozen entries in the "Routing" category (https://github.com/markerikson/redux-ecosystem-links/blob/master/routing.md https://github.com/markerikson/redux-ecosystem-links/blob/ma...). Again, I haven't used any of them myself, but they exist. And that's _just_ "libs that relate to routing and Redux", much less "libs that relate to routing and React, or routing in general".
Bahamut 10y ago
There is now ui-router-react, the React version of UI Router for Angular, an extremely popular router for Angular 1 - it is such a defacto solution for Angular that even Google uses it, and the core got extracted to be agnostic to Angular.
- ChrisCinelli 10y ago
  https://ui-router.github.io/tutorial/react/helloworld https://ui-router.github.io/tutorial/react/helloworld Look promising!
wesleytodd 10y ago
If you are interested, this is what my team uses and it works REALLY well for us. It uses the standalone Express 5.0 router, so any pattern that works in Express works here. https://github.com/wesleytodd/nighthawk https://github.com/wesleytodd/nighthawk
timdorr 10y ago
2.x and 3.0 are not deprecated at all. We're working on another release of 3.0 in fact (hopefully a beta before we go to final 3.0.0). We plan on supporting that version indefinitely, as there is a whole ecosystem of projects and libraries that depend on it. We're not pulling the rug out from underneath anyone and running 3.0 isn't "running the old version". 4.0 represents what we think is a great building block for routing in React applications. But it is not a hard requirement to use it. We think people are going to be more jazzed for 4.0, but there is so much stuff built around 2.x/3.0 that it would be moronic for us to force you into this new structure. Please, keep your deps at "react-router": "< 4.0.0" if you want to. You won't be penalized for doing so, I promise you.
- karmajunkie 10y ago
  It's a little late now, but I might suggest in the future of that rather than radically change an API interface, even between major versions, you launch it as an entirely new package. While I really appreciate the work that you guys have put into this library, I think what everyone is really frustrated about is the heavy change between versions. This creates a lot of logistical headaches and perception problems that have upstream consequences, some technical and some political.

by tbrock 10y ago

acemarke 10y ago

Per comments from the React devs, Facebook handles routing needs with their own internal stuff. They don't use anything like React-Router themselves, so they have no need to build or open-source something like that.

andrewingram 10y ago
One thing worth adding is that along with Redux, React Router has been vocally blessed as the right solution by Facebook employees. This means it occupies an unusual position within the ecosystem in that it's a de-facto standard, and fairly critical to many projects. It definitely suffers from a documentation problem (the new examples are genuinely great, but previous versions were very light on practical examples and best practices).
- acemarke 10y ago
  Thankfully, I've never had to deal with routing in any of the applications I've worked with. (Primarily internal stuff that is true "applications in a browser", rather than stuff addressable by sub-URLs.) So, I've managed to avoid all this complexity. Wasn't until relatively recently that I even understood what client-side routing actually involves. Personally, I think that routing in general is one of the major causes of "Javascript Fatigue", and is proof that building complex software is inherently complex. I will say that despite its "de-facto standard" nature, there's certainly a number of other options out there. I keep a list of Redux-related addons and utilities, and there's a couple dozen entries in the "Routing" category (https://github.com/markerikson/redux-ecosystem-links/blob/master/routing.md https://github.com/markerikson/redux-ecosystem-links/blob/ma...). Again, I haven't used any of them myself, but they exist. And that's _just_ "libs that relate to routing and Redux", much less "libs that relate to routing and React, or routing in general".

Bahamut 10y ago

There is now ui-router-react, the React version of UI Router for Angular, an extremely popular router for Angular 1 - it is such a defacto solution for Angular that even Google uses it, and the core got extracted to be agnostic to Angular.

ChrisCinelli 10y ago
https://ui-router.github.io/tutorial/react/helloworld https://ui-router.github.io/tutorial/react/helloworld Look promising!

wesleytodd 10y ago

If you are interested, this is what my team uses and it works REALLY well for us. It uses the standalone Express 5.0 router, so any pattern that works in Express works here. https://github.com/wesleytodd/nighthawk https://github.com/wesleytodd/nighthawk

timdorr 10y ago

2.x and 3.0 are not deprecated at all. We're working on another release of 3.0 in fact (hopefully a beta before we go to final 3.0.0). We plan on supporting that version indefinitely, as there is a whole ecosystem of projects and libraries that depend on it. We're not pulling the rug out from underneath anyone and running 3.0 isn't "running the old version". 4.0 represents what we think is a great building block for routing in React applications. But it is not a hard requirement to use it. We think people are going to be more jazzed for 4.0, but there is so much stuff built around 2.x/3.0 that it would be moronic for us to force you into this new structure. Please, keep your deps at "react-router": "< 4.0.0" if you want to. You won't be penalized for doing so, I promise you.

karmajunkie 10y ago
It's a little late now, but I might suggest in the future of that rather than radically change an API interface, even between major versions, you launch it as an entirely new package. While I really appreciate the work that you guys have put into this library, I think what everyone is really frustrated about is the heavy change between versions. This creates a lot of logistical headaches and perception problems that have upstream consequences, some technical and some political.