Fix Error 404 when Refreshing a route with React Router

Introduction:

When we develop web applications with React and use React Router for navigation, we often face the 404 error problem when refreshing the page on specific paths. This is due to how web servers handle requests and how React Router handles client side routes.

Problem:

When using React Router, the navigation between pages is done client-side, which means that the routes are handled by JavaScript in the browser. However, when refreshing the page or directly accessing a specific URL, some web servers may not understand how to handle these routes.

Solutions:

1. Configuration for Apache:

If your application is hosted on an Apache server, you can solve this problem by creating an .htaccess file with the following content:

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
  RewriteEngine On 
  RewriteBase / 
  RewriteRule ^index\.html$ - [L] 
  RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f 
  RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d 
  RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-l
  RewriteRule . /index.html [L]
</IfModule>

This code ensures that all requests are redirected to index.html, where React Router will take care of handling the routes.

2. Configuration for Netlify:

In the case of Netlify, you can create a _redirects file in the root of your project with the following content:

/*  /index.html 200

This tells Netlify to redirect all requests to index.html and respond with a 200 (OK) code.

3. Configuration for Vercel:

If you decide to host your application on Vercel, you need to configure the vercel.json file with the following content:

{
  "rewrites": [
    {
      "source": "/(.*)",
      "destination": "/index.html"
    }
  ]
}

This configuration ensures that Vercel redirects all requests to index.html, thus ensuring proper handling of React Router routes.

Conclusion:

When addressing the 404 error challenge when refreshing a page in a React application with React Router, it is critical to understand how web servers work and how we can configure them to handle routes in a way that is compatible with client-side routing. Whether for Apache, Netlify or Vercel servers, these configurations offer effective solutions to ensure smooth operation of your React application.

Comments

[Shakil Ahmed]

Exciting challenge! Have you explored leveraging React Router's Switch component or checking your route configurations?