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Ionic React (Beta) Tabs: Step By Step

Working with the new ionic cli generating an app with tabs and eventually a login page

Ionic & React Components used in this example:

• IonTabs Documentation
• IonBackButton
• React Router Documentation

What It Will Look Like

Getting Started

use the ionic cli to build your app, make sure you specify react and we are going to use the tab starter as our baseline and then move some things around to get the desired results.

See blog post for more detailed instructions on getting started Blog Post Here

Enter into console, and when prompted select tabs as the starter template

$ ionic start myApp --type=react

? Starter template: tabs

Housecleaning

So lets clean up some of this and create a more structured starting point.

Create a new file called TabRoot.tsx and copy everything from inside of the IonApp element in App.tsx over to the new component. When you are done, App.tsx should look like this

// FILE: App.tsx
const App: React.SFC = () => (
  <Router>
    <Route exact path="/" render={() => <Redirect to="/tab1"/>} />
    <div className="App">
      <IonApp>

      </IonApp>
    </div>
  </Router>
);

Remove this line

// FILE: App.tsx
<Route exact path="/" render={() => <Redirect to="/tab1"/>} />

Then add the new default Route to point to the TabRoot component we just built

// FILE: App.tsx
const App: React.SFC = () => (
  <Router>
    <div className="App">
      <IonApp>
         <Route path="/" component={TabRoot} />
      </IonApp>
    </div>
  </Router>
);

And TabRoot.tsx should look like this after pasting the code we cut from App.tsx.

Please note I have removed the imports to save space when looking at the code. I also have reduced the number of tabs from three to two, I believe that is sufficcient to make my point.

Please note that the documentation regarding how IonTabs work in React doesnt appear to be correct

// FILE: TabRoot.tsx
interface IAppProps {}

const TabRoot: React.FC<IAppProps> = props => {
  return (
    <IonPage id="main">
      <IonTabs>
        <IonRouterOutlet>
          <Route path="/:tab(tab1)" component={Tab1} exact={true} />
          <Route path="/:tab(tab2)" component={Tab2} />
        </IonRouterOutlet>
        <IonTabBar slot="bottom">
          <IonTabButton tab="tab1" href="/tab1">
            <IonIcon name="flash" />
            <IonLabel>Tab One</IonLabel>
          </IonTabButton>
          <IonTabButton tab="tab2" href="/tab2">
            <IonIcon name="apps" />
            <IonLabel>Tab Two</IonLabel>
          </IonTabButton>
        </IonTabBar>
      </IonTabs>
    </IonPage>
  );
};

export default TabRoot;

Now the application is set up such that the default route is to render the TabRoot component, but we need to tell the component which tab to render and we want it to be Tab1

// FILE: TabRoot.tsx
<IonRouterOutlet>
    <Route path="/:tab(tab1)" component={Tab1} exact={true} />
    <Route path="/:tab(tab2)" component={Tab2} />
    <Route path="/" render={() => <Redirect to="/tab1" />} /> 
</IonRouterOutlet>

Why Bother?

Having all of the default routing based around tabs at the route level of the application can become problematic as the application gets more complex. As you will see in the later sections when the app has to check for authenticated user and protected routes, this setup will be beneficial

Cleanup Tab1

There is alot of noise in Tab1 so lets make it look like Tab2, copy contents from Tab2 into Tab1

// FILE: Tab1.tsx
import React from 'react';
import { IonHeader, IonToolbar, IonTitle, IonContent } from '@ionic/react';

const Tab1: React.SFC = () => {
  return (
    <>
      <IonHeader>
        <IonToolbar>
          <IonTitle>Tab One</IonTitle>
        </IonToolbar>
      </IonHeader>
      <IonContent />
    </>
  );
};

export default Tab1;

Navigating to Detail Pages

Lets just duplicate the file Tab1.tsx and rename it Tab1Detail.tsx... clean it up so it looks like this when you are done.

// FILE: Tab1Detail.tsx
import React from 'react';
import { IonHeader, IonToolbar, IonTitle, IonContent } from '@ionic/react';

const Tab1Detail: React.SFC = () => {
  return (
    <>
      <IonHeader>
        <IonToolbar>
          <IonTitle>Tab One Detail</IonTitle>
        </IonToolbar>
      </IonHeader>
      <IonContent />
    </>
  );
};
export default Tab1Detail;

Add button in the IonContent section of Tab1; we will use that button to navigate to the detail page Tab1Detail that we just created.

// FILE: Tab.tsx
<IonContent>
    <IonButton
        expand="full"
        style={{ margin: "14" }}
        onClick={e => {
            e.preventDefault();
            props.history.push("/tab1-detail");
        }}
    > NEXT PAGE</IonButton>
</IonContent>

So a few problems when you make this change in Tab1.tsx, the first one is

Where is the props.history coming from?

We can use react-router withRouter to get the history object passed along as a property to the component since the component was being rendered by the Router. So lets make the following changes to the files.

// FILE: Tab1.tsx
// add the import..
import { withRouter } from "react-router";

Then add parameter, and for now we will specify the type as any

// FILE: Tab1.tsx
const Tab1: React.SFC<any> = (props) => {

Finally we need to add the actual route we want to navigate to /:tab(tab1-detail) to the Router element in TabRoot, So add the new route.

// FILE: TabRoot.tsx
<IonRouterOutlet>
    <Route path="/:tab(tab1)" component={Tab1} />
    <Route path="/:tab(tab1-detail)" component={Tab1Detail} />
    <Route path="/:tab(tab2)" component={Tab2} />
    <Route path="/" render={() => <Redirect to="/tab1" />} /> 
</IonRouterOutlet>

Now to go back, we need to first add the IonBackButton component to the toolbar on the Tab1Detail page, right above the <IonTitle>.

// FILE: Tab1Detail.tsx
<IonButtons slot="start">
  <IonBackButton
      text=""
      defaultHref="/"
      onClick={() => props.history.replace("/tab1")}
      goBack={() => {}}
  />
</IonButtons>
<IonTitle>Tab One Detail</IonTitle>

Known Issue: As of now, the defaultHref is not working so I had to respond to the onCLick event to get this to work.

As you can see we are using the history propery again to go back to the previous component so we need to add the withRouter and properly specify the parameters for the component.

// FILE: Tab1Detail.tsx
import { withRouter } from "react-router";        // <== NEW

const Tab1Detail: React.SFC<any> = (props) => {   // <== NEW
  return (
    <>
      <IonHeader>
        <IonToolbar>
          <IonButtons slot="start">
            <IonBackButton
              text=""
              defaultHref="/tab1"
              onClick={ ()=> props.history.replace("/tab1")}  // <== NEW
              goBack={() => {}}
            />
          </IonButtons>
          <IonTitle>Tab One Detail</IonTitle>
        </IonToolbar>
      </IonHeader>
      <IonContent />
    </>
  );
};
export default withRouter(Tab1Detail);  // <== NEW

aaronksaunders / ionic-react-tabs-tut

Using the new Ionic CLI to generate an app with tabs and in part two, a login page to demonstrate the authentication flow

ionic-react-tabs-tut

Using the new Ionic CLI to generate an app with tabs and in part two, a login page to demonstrate the authentication flow

Updated to latest react versions

Ionic:

   Ionic CLI       : 6.11.8-testing.0 (/Users/aaronksaunders/.nvm/versions/node/v13.9.0/lib/node_modules/@ionic/cli)
   Ionic Framework : @ionic/react 5.3.2

Capacitor:

   Capacitor CLI   : 2.4.1
   @capacitor/core : 2.4.1

Utility:

   cordova-res (update available: 0.15.1) : 0.11.0
   native-run (update available: 1.1.0)   : 1.0.0

System:

   NodeJS : v13.9.0 (/Users/aaronksaunders/.nvm/versions/node/v13.9.0/bin/node)
   npm    : 6.14.8
   OS     : macOS Catalina

View on GitHub

Comments

[dotorimook]

Nice post. Why is :tab() necessary for the path? Do you know what it does exactly?

[Aaron K Saunders]

Not needed anymore, take a look at some of the more recent examples I have posted