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Khan Rabiul
Khan Rabiul

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Layout in Next.js

#webdev #nextjs #layout #frontend

layout.tsx takes a React component as a children. There is a default layout file in the app directory. The file determines the main layout of Header, Footer, and other general component. The layout file in the app directory can not be removed. It means if you delete the file and run the project, the layout file will be regenerated.

layout file may look like:

// app/layout.tsx

export default function RootLayout({
  children,
}: {
  children: React.ReactNode;
}) {
  return (
    <html lang="en">
      <body>
        <header>My App Header</header>
        <main>{children}</main>
        <footer>My App Footer</footer>
      </body>
    </html>
  );
}
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With the superpower of Next.js, layout receives all the files named page.tsx/jsx/... and creates UI for you. Next.js automatically wraps all page.tsx (or .js/.jsx/.tsx) files under app/ with the nearest layout.tsx in the file tree. You don’t manually import or attach pages to layouts—file-system conventions, do that for you.

Nested layout

In your project, you need one shared layout and another for deeper. Like, for root layout app/layout.tsx and for nested app/user/username/layout.tsx.
The folder structure should look like this,

next-practice/app/
├── globals.css
├── layout.tsx
├── page.tsx
└── user/
    ├── page.tsx
    └── username/
        ├── layout.tsx
        └── page.tsx
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How's it working?

* root layout app/layout.tsx

  • It renders all children until it finds another layout.tsx file. In our case, the root layout will render the app/page.tsx and user/page.tsx as they are the children of layout.tsx.
  • As app/user/username/layout.tsx contains another layout file, it will stop rendering the root layout.
  • At this point, app/user/username/layout.tsx will render the new layout's UI, how you designed.
  • Now app/user/username/layout.tsx becomes the root layout for its nested pages/routes.
  • If you create more nested directories and page.tsx in the username, they will be rendered in the app/user/username/layout.tsx layout.

Keeping the page.tsx in the same directory as layout.tsx is a must. Otherwise, the route segment for the layout will not be accessible. Keep in mind layout.tsx does not create route, but page.tsx does. So to make the route accessible, you need the page.tsx there. For example

next-practice/app/
├── globals.css
├── layout.tsx           
└── user/
    ├── page.tsx     
    └── username/
        ├── layout.tsx
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  • If you try to access /user/username you will see 404 Not Found Page. As there is no page.tsx file. To make the route accessible add a page.tsx/js/jsx/... file there.

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