react-router-dom: getting props.location from within <BrowserRouter> component

Question

I have a simple App that uses BrowserRouter from 'react-router-dom' v4. I'm trying to access the location.pathname property from within the <BrowserRouter/> component, without avail:

class App extends Component{
  render(){
    return (
      <BrowserRouter>
        // How do I access this.props.location?
        <div className={(this.props.location.pathnme === "/account") ? "bgnd-black" : "bgnd-white"} >
          <Switch>
            <Route path="/login" component={LoginPage}/>
            <Route path="/success" component={LoginSuccess}/>
            <Route path="/account" component={MyAccount}/>
            ...
            <Route component={Error404}/>
          </Switch>
        </div>
      </BrowserRouter>
    );
  }
}

I know that I can access the app's current path location through the child components with this.props.location.pathname, but I need to access it from the parent component, just below <BrowserRouter/> to run additional logic that doesn't pertain to child components. How can I get this location?

Answer 1

Since react-router v5.1.0 you can use useLocation.

https://reactrouter.com/web/api/Hooks/uselocation

class App extends Component{
  render(){
    const location = useLocation();

    return (
      <div className={(location.pathname === "/account") ? "bgnd-black" : "bgnd-white"} >
        //...
      </div>
    );
  }
}

// ...
<BrowserRouter>
  <App />
</BrowserRouter>

Answer 2

You can also do it using withRouter which has a similar result to putting the code in a render parameter and avoids the need for a "fake" <Route/>.

Essentially you put the JSX that needs to know the location in a component of its own, which is wrapped by withRouter. This supplies the location to the component:

import { withRouter } from 'react-router-dom';

const Content = withRouter(props =>
    <div className={(props.location.pathname === "/account") ? "backg...
    ...
    </div>
);

Then you use that in your main router section:

class App extends Component{
    render() {
        return (
            <BrowserRouter>
                <Content/>
                ...

Answer 3

After digging through their GitHub issues, I found the solution. I must render a <Route /> within <BrowserRouter /> and pass the rest of my app into its render() function with history as a parameter. Within the render function, I can find the app's location in history.location.pathname.

class App extends Component{
  render(){
    return (
      <BrowserRouter>

        // We must add a parent <Route> and render its children while passing 'history' as parameter
        <Route path={Paths.reserve} render={(history) => 

          // Within render(), we can find it in history.location.pathname
          <div className={(history.location.pathname === "/account") ? "background-black" : "background-white"} >
            <Switch>
              <Route path="/login" component={LoginPage}/>
              <Route path="/success" component={LoginSuccess}/>
              <Route path="/account" component={MyAccount}/>
              ...
              <Route component={Error404}/>
            </Switch>
          </div>
          }/>
        }} />
      </BrowserRouter>
    );
  }
}

This will update the history parameter automatically, without having to re-render on componentDidMount() or componentDidUpdate()

Answer 4

You achieve what u have asked for by doing this

import AccessRoute from './AccessRoute'

class App extends Component{
  render(){
    return (
      <BrowserRouter>

  <AccessRoute>    
 <div className={(this.props.location.pathnme === "/account") ? "bgnd-black" : "bgnd-white"} >
          <Switch>
            <Route path="/login" component={LoginPage}/>
            <Route path="/success" component={LoginSuccess}/>
            <Route path="/account" component={MyAccount}/>
            ...
            <Route component={Error404}/>
          </Switch>
        </div>
       </AccessRoute>    
      </BrowserRouter>
    );
  }
}

AccessRoute.jsx

import React from 'react'
import {withRouter} from 'react-router';
class AccessRoute extends React.Component{
    constructor(props){
        super(props);
    }



 //If you want to find the location on mount use this 

 componentDidMount(){
        console.log("the path name is ",this.props.location.pathname);
    }


 //If you want to find the location on change use this

  componentDidUpdate(prevprops){
    if(this.props.location.pathname!=prevprops.location.pathname){
        console.log("the new path name is ",this.props.location.pathname);
    }

}

    render(){
        return(

            this.props.children

            );
    }
}
export default withRouter(AccessRoute)