Resource Routes are not part of your application UI, but are still part of your application. They can send any kind of Response.
Most routes in React Router are UI Routes, or routes that actually render a component. But routes don't always have to render components. There are a handful of cases where you want to use route as a general-purpose endpoint to your website. Here are a few examples:
If a route doesn't export a default component, it can be used as a Resource Route. If called with GET, the loader's response is returned and none of the parent route loaders are called either (because those are needed for the UI, but this is not the UI). If called with POST, the action's response is returned.
For example, consider a UI Route that renders a report, note the link:
export async function loader({
params,
}: LoaderFunctionArgs) {
let report = await getReport(params.id);
return report;
}
export default function Report() {
const report = useLoaderData<typeof loader>();
return (
<div>
<h1>{report.name}</h1>
<Link to="pdf" reloadDocument>
View as PDF
</Link>
{/* ... */}
</div>
);
}
It's linking to a PDF version of the page. To make this work we can create a Resource Route below it. Notice that it has no default export component: that makes it a Resource Route.
export async function loader({
params,
}: LoaderFunctionArgs) {
const report = await getReport(params.id);
const pdf = await generateReportPDF(report);
return new Response(pdf, {
status: 200,
headers: {
"Content-Type": "application/pdf",
},
});
}
When the user clicks the link from the UI route, they will navigate to the PDF.
reloadDocument on any Links to Resource Routes
There's a subtle detail to be aware of when linking to resource routes. You need to link to it with <Link reloadDocument> or a plain <a href>. If you link to it with a normal <Link to="pdf"> without reloadDocument, then the resource route will be treated as a UI route. React Router will try to get the data with fetch and render the component. Don't sweat it too much, you'll get a helpful error message if you make this mistake.
To handle GET requests export a loader function:
import type * as Route from "./+types.resource";
export const loader = async ({
request,
}: Route.LoaderArgs) => {
// handle "GET" request
return { success: true };
};
To handle POST, PUT, PATCH or DELETE requests export an action function:
import type * as Route from "./+types.resource";
export const action = async ({
request,
}: Route.ActionArgs) => {
switch (request.method) {
case "POST": {
/* handle "POST" */
}
case "PUT": {
/* handle "PUT" */
}
case "PATCH": {
/* handle "PATCH" */
}
case "DELETE": {
/* handle "DELETE" */
}
}
};
Resource Routes do not support non-standard HTTP methods - those should be handled by the HTTP server that serves your React Router requests.
Returning bare objects or using the data util from a Resource Route will automatically encode the responses as a turbo-stream, which automatically serializes Dates, Promises, and other objects over the network. React Router automatically deserializes turbo-stream data when you call resource routes from React Router APIs such as <Form>, useSubmit, or useFetcher.
Third-party services, like webhooks, that call your resource routes likely can't decode turbo-stream data. You should use Response instances to respond with any other kind of data using Response.json or new Response() with the Content-Type header.
export const action = async () => {
return Response.json(
{ time: Date.now() },
{
status: 200,
}
);
};
fetch call in a mobile app, it is best to manually encode the data using the turbo-stream package directly, return that using new Response, and have the client decode the response using turbo-stream.
When calling Resource Routes using <Form>, useSubmit, or Fetchers, Client Loaders and Actions defined in the Resource Route will participate in the request lifecycle.
import type * as Route from "./+types.github";
export const action = async () => {
return Response.json(
{ time: Date.now() },
{
status: 200,
}
);
};
export const clientAction = async ({
serverAction,
}: Route.ClientActionArgs) => {
return Promise.race([
serverAction,
new Promise((resolve, reject) =>
setTimeout(reject, 5000)
),
]);
};
Resource routes can be used to handle webhooks. For example, you can create a webhook that receives notifications from GitHub when a new commit is pushed to a repository:
import type * as Route from "./+types.github";
import crypto from "node:crypto";
export const action = async ({
request,
}: Route.ActionArgs) => {
if (request.method !== "POST") {
return Response.json(
{ message: "Method not allowed" },
{
status: 405,
}
);
}
const payload = await request.json();
/* Validate the webhook */
const signature = request.headers.get(
"X-Hub-Signature-256"
);
const generatedSignature = `sha256=${crypto
.createHmac("sha256", process.env.GITHUB_WEBHOOK_SECRET)
.update(JSON.stringify(payload))
.digest("hex")}`;
if (signature !== generatedSignature) {
return Response.json(
{ message: "Signature mismatch" },
{
status: 401,
}
);
}
/* process the webhook (e.g. enqueue a background job) */
return Response.json({ success: true });
};