NavLink

• Framework
• Data
• Declarative

Summary

Reference Documentation ↗

Wraps Link with additional props for styling active and pending states.

• Automatically applies classes to the link based on its active and pending states, see NavLinkProps.className.
• Automatically applies aria-current="page" to the link when the link is active. See aria-current on MDN.

import { NavLink } from "react-router";
<NavLink to="/message" />;

States are available through the className, style, and children render props. See NavLinkRenderProps.

<NavLink
  to="/messages"
  className={({ isActive, isPending }) =>
    isPending ? "pending" : isActive ? "active" : ""
  }
>
  Messages
</NavLink>

Props

caseSensitive

Changes the matching logic to make it case-sensitive:

children

Can be regular React children or a function that receives an object with the active and pending states of the link.

<NavLink to="/tasks">
  {({ isActive }) => (
    <span className={isActive ? "active" : ""}>Tasks</span>
  )}
</NavLink>

className

Classes are automatically applied to NavLink that correspond to the state.

a.active {
  color: red;
}
a.pending {
  color: blue;
}
a.transitioning {
  view-transition-name: my-transition;
}

Note that pending is only available with Framework and Data modes.

discover

Defines the link discovery behavior

<Link discover="render" />

• render - default, discover the route when the link renders
• none - don't eagerly discover, only discover if the link is clicked

end

Changes the matching logic for the active and pending states to only match to the "end" of the NavLinkProps.to. If the URL is longer, it will no longer be considered active.

<NavLink to="/"> is an exceptional case because every URL matches /. To avoid this matching every single route by default, it effectively ignores the end prop and only matches when you're at the root route.

prefetch

Defines the data and module prefetching behavior for the link.

<Link prefetch="intent" />

• none - default, no prefetching
• intent - prefetches when the user hovers or focuses the link
• render - prefetches when the link renders
• viewport - prefetches when the link is in the viewport, very useful for mobile

Prefetching is done with HTML <link rel="prefetch"> tags. They are inserted after the link.

<a href="..." />
<a href="..." />
<link rel="prefetch" /> // might conditionally render

Because of this, if you are using nav :last-child you will need to use nav :last-of-type so the styles don't conditionally fall off your last link (and any other similar selectors).

preventScrollReset

Prevents the scroll position from being reset to the top of the window when the link is clicked and the app is using ScrollRestoration. This only prevents new locations reseting scroll to the top, scroll position will be restored for back/forward button navigation.

<Link to="?tab=one" preventScrollReset />

relative

Defines the relative path behavior for the link.

<Link to=".." /> // default: "route"
<Link relative="route" />
<Link relative="path" />

Consider a route hierarchy where a parent route pattern is "blog" and a child route pattern is "blog/:slug/edit".

• route - default, resolves the link relative to the route pattern. In the example above a relative link of ".." will remove both :slug/edit segments back to "/blog".
• path - relative to the path so .. will only remove one URL segment up to "/blog/:slug"

reloadDocument

Will use document navigation instead of client side routing when the link is clicked: the browser will handle the transition normally (as if it were an <a href>).

<Link to="/logout" reloadDocument />

replace

Replaces the current entry in the history stack instead of pushing a new one onto it.

<Link replace />

# with a history stack like this
A -> B

# normal link click pushes a new entry
A -> B -> C

# but with `replace`, B is replaced by C
A -> C

state

Adds persistent client side routing state to the next location.

<Link to="/somewhere/else" state={{ some: "value" }} />

The location state is accessed from the location.

function SomeComp() {
  const location = useLocation();
  location.state; // { some: "value" }
}

This state is inaccessible on the server as it is implemented on top of history.state

style

Regular React style object or a function that receives an object with the active and pending states of the link.

<NavLink to="/tasks" style={{ color: "red" }} />
<NavLink to="/tasks" style={({ isActive, isPending }) => ({
  color:
    isActive ? "red" :
    isPending ? "blue" : "black"
})} />

Note that pending is only available with Framework and Data modes.

to

Can be a string or a partial Path:

<Link to="/some/path" />

<Link
  to={{
    pathname: "/some/path",
    search: "?query=string",
    hash: "#hash",
  }}
/>

viewTransition

Enables a View Transition for this navigation.

<Link to={to} viewTransition>
  Click me
</Link>

To apply specific styles for the transition, see useViewTransitionState