How to implement authenticated routes in React Router 4?

Question

I was trying to implement authenticated routes but found that React Router 4 now prevents this from working:

<Route exact path="/" component={Index} />
<Route path="/auth" component={UnauthenticatedWrapper}>
    <Route path="/auth/login" component={LoginBotBot} />
</Route>
<Route path="/domains" component={AuthenticatedWrapper}>
    <Route exact path="/domains" component={DomainsIndex} />
</Route>

The error is:

Warning: You should not use <Route component> and <Route children> in the same route; <Route children> will be ignored

In that case, whats the correct way to implement this?

It appears in react-router (v4) docs, it suggests something like

<Router>
    <div>
    <AuthButton/>
    <ul>
        <li><Link to="/public">Public Page</Link></li>
        <li><Link to="/protected">Protected Page</Link></li>
    </ul>
    <Route path="/public" component={Public}/>
    <Route path="/login" component={Login}/>
    <PrivateRoute path="/protected" component={Protected}/>
    </div>
</Router>

But isit possible to achieve this while grouping a bunch of routes together?

---

UPDATE

Ok, after some research, I came up with this:

import React, {PropTypes} from "react"
import {Route} from "react-router-dom"

export default class AuthenticatedRoute extends React.Component {
  render() {
    if (!this.props.isLoggedIn) {
      this.props.redirectToLogin()
      return null
    }
    return <Route {...this.props} />
  }
}

AuthenticatedRoute.propTypes = {
  isLoggedIn: PropTypes.bool.isRequired,
  component: PropTypes.element,
  redirectToLogin: PropTypes.func.isRequired
}

Isit correct to dispatch an action in render() it feels wrong. It doesnt really seem correct with componentDidMount or some other hook either?

Answer 1

You're going to want to use the Redirect component. There's a few different approaches to this problem. Here's one I like, have a PrivateRoute component that takes in an authed prop and then renders based on that props.

function PrivateRoute ({component: Component, authed, ...rest}) {
  return (
    <Route
      {...rest}
      render={(props) => authed === true
        ? <Component {...props} />
        : <Redirect to={{pathname: '/login', state: {from: props.location}}} />}
    />
  )
}

Now your Routes can look something like this

<Route path='/' exact component={Home} />
<Route path='/login' component={Login} />
<Route path='/register' component={Register} />
<PrivateRoute authed={this.state.authed} path='/dashboard' component={Dashboard} />

If you're still confused, I wrote this post that may help - Protected routes and authentication with React Router v4