Can't navigate to react-router-dom URL's

Question

There are a few topics on SO like this one which recommends changing Webpack and this one that recommends setting up a catch-all.

I am using react-router-dom for three routes; similar story to the rest of the questions on here, the / path works but neither /cars or /about does.

import React, {Component} from 'react';
import {render} from 'react-dom';
import {BrowserRouter, Route, Switch, Link} from 'react-router-dom';


const Home = () => (
  <h1>Home</h1>
)

const Car = () => (
  <h1>Cars</h1>
)

const About = () => (
  <h1>About</h1>
)

render(
  <BrowserRouter>
    <Switch>
      <Route exact path="/" component={Home}/>
      <Route exact path="/cars" component={Car}/>
      <Route path="/about" component={About}/>
    </Switch>
  </BrowserRouter>,
  document.getElementById('container')
);

I have tried adding a publicPath and historyApiFallback into my webpack config:

module.exports = {
  entry: ['./src/index.jsx'],
  output: {
    path: path.resolve('public'),
    filename: 'bundle.js',
    publicPath: '/'
  },
  module: {
    loaders: [
      {test: /\.js$/,loader: 'babel-loader',exclude: /node_modules/},
      {test: /\.jsx$/,loader: 'babel-loader',exclude: /node_modules/}
    ]
  },
  devServer: {
    historyApiFallback: true
  }
}

But as soon as I navigate to http://localhost:8080/cars I get a Cannot GET /cars message on the browser and a load of errors similar to this:

Refused to load the font 'data:font/woff;base64,d09GRgABAAAAAGz8ABEAAAAA09gAAQABAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAABHREVGAAABgAAAAC8AAAA0AsQC9UdQT1MAAAGwAAATuAAANLwBEyF1R1NVQgAAFWgAAAIWAAAEZqfk0PVPUy8yAAAXgAAAAFAAAABgaNCCw2NtYXAAABfQAAABkwAAAkQk8AV7Y3Z0IAAAGWQAAABiAAAAugGiQq9mcGdtAAAZyAAABZcAAAvNb3/BHGdhc3AAAB9gAAAACAAAAAgAAAAQZ2x5ZgAAH2gAAESvAAB8yu28l3FoZWFkAABkGAAAADYAAAA2BmibVWhoZWEAAGRQAAAAIAAAACQHMQRzaG10eAAAZHAAAAJDAAAEImBmMbxsb2NhAABmtAAAAhoAAAIaflxdR21heHAAAGjQAAAAIAAAACACjgzgbmFtZQAAaPAAAACdAAABKBQEL8lwb3N0AABpkAAAAsMAAAS9pi3QFXByZ...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' because it violates the following Content Security Policy directive: "default-src 'self'". Note that 'font-src' was not explicitly set, so 'default-src' is used as a fallback.

Answer 1

Typically after trying to figure this out on my own for 30 minutes, getting frustrated and posting on SO; I figured it out 2 minutes after...!

The configuration I added into my webpack file was pointless; seeing as I am serving my files using express

The catch-all method was what I needed, but I had done it wrong. You have two options. Do a proper "catch all" and send everything to the HTML file...

app.get('*', (req, res) => {
  res.sendFile(appRootPath + '/public/index.html');
});

or, if like me, you want to only send a specific endpoint, so you can still manage 'other things' you can...

app.get('/react*', (req, res) => {
  res.sendFile(appRootPath + '/public/index.html');
});

A specific mention, because this is what tripped me up, make sure you do /react*/ and not /react/*

I could then update my Routes to the following and browse to them directly...

render(
  <BrowserRouter>
    <Switch>
      <Route exact path="/react" component={Home}/>
      <Route exact path="/react/car" component={Car}/>
      <Route path="/react/about" component={About}/>
    </Switch>
  </BrowserRouter>,
  document.getElementById('container')
);