react-wise-router

Authentication, Authorisation and Permissions validation wrapper component for react-router-dom. Check below for new version updates. Rewritten in TypeScript.

Install

npm install react-wise-router --save

// or

yarn add react-wise-router

Usage

var WiseRouter = require('react-wise-router');

Or

import WiseRouter from 'react-wise-router';

WiseRouter component

Renders the appropriate component if and only if certain criteria you specify are met, otherwise:

1. it redirects the user to another route you specify or to a global one such as /
2. it renders a fallback component you specify
3. it lets the component handle what needs to be done, and it passes to it certain props you specify with passRouteProps prop. (new)

For instance a user tries to access a route which requires permissions ['CAN_EDIT_ITEM', 'CAN_DELETE_ITEM'], but the user has only permissions ['CAN_VIEW_ITEM'], they will be redirected to custom route you specify through the redirectTo prop, or if redirectTo is not set, the redirect will fallback to the global default defaultRedirect prop; or if you set the fallback prop, you could render a custom component and pass it any props you specify. For example: error messages explaining why the user can not access that specific route.

Props

Name	Type	Default	Description
component	null or component<ReactComponent>	null	This is the main React component that is rendered
exact	bool	true	react-router-dom prop
needsAuthentication	bool	null	user needs to be authenticated to access the component
needsAuthorisation	bool	null	user needs to be authorized to access the component
isAuthenticated	bool	null	whether or not the user is authenticated
isAuthorised	bool	null	whether or not the user is authorised. if you don't need this validation just pass isAuthorised={true}. Please read more below on this.
routePermissions	array[string]	null	array of permissions required to access this component
userPermissions	array[string]	null	array of permissions the user has
redirectTo	string	null	where to redirect the user to if they don't have much permissions or are unauthenticated, this is per component
defaultRedirect	string	/	where to redirect the user to if they don't have much permissions or are unauthenticated, this is global and used when a component doesn't specify a redirectTo
debug	bool	false	if you set debug prop to true, every route you head on or you are redirected to will be consoled to your log.
rest	array	null	these are all other passed props, they are passed to react-router-dom's Route component
fallback	null or object{component<ReactComponent>, props<object>}	null	if fallback is set with at least a component, it is what will be rendered if validation tests fail. fallback prop priority overides redirectTo and defaultRedirect.
passRouteProps	false or array[string]	false	these are the props (or rather rules. See example below) you define for your routes, they are passed to the main component and can be accessed from your component's props. Please read more below.

Example

Routes.js

import MyAccount from './components/User/MyAccount';
import Home from './pages/Home';
import Users from './pages/Users';
import Unauthorized from './components/Errors/Unauthorized';


// these are our app routes and their respective components
const Routes = [
  {
    path: '/',
    exact: true,
    name: 'Home',
    component: Home,
    needsAuthentication: false,
    needsAuthorisation: false,
    permissions: [],
    redirectTo: null,
    fallback: null,
  },
  {
    path: '/account',
    exact: true,
    name: 'MyAccount',
    component: MyAccount,
    needsAuthentication: true,
    needsAuthorisation: true,
    permissions: ['CAN_ACCESS_ACCOUNT', 'CAN_EDIT_ACCOUNT'],
    redirectTo: null,
    fallback: {
      component: Unauthorized,
      props: {
        message: `You do not have enough permissions to access 'MyAccount'`,
      }
    },
  },
  {
    path: '/users',
    exact: true,
    name: 'Users',
    component: Users,
    needsAuthentication: true,
    needsAuthorisation: true,
    permissions: ['CAN_FOLLOW_USER', 'CAN_UNFOLLOW_USER'],
    redirectTo: null,
    fallback: null,
  },
]

export default Routes

App.jsx

import React from 'react';
import { BrowserRouter as Router, Switch, Redirect } from "react-router-dom";
import WiseRouter from 'react-wise-router';
import Routes from './Routes'


/*

currentUser = {
  isAuthenticated: true,
  permissions: ['CAN_ACCESS_ACCOUNT', 'CAN_EDIT_ACCOUNT', 'CAN_FOLLOW_USER', 'CAN_UNFOLLOW_USER', 'IS_SUPERUSER']
}

*/


function App(props) {

  const { permissions, isAuthenticated } = props.currentUser;

  return (
      <div>
        <Router>
          <Switch>
            {Routes.map(route => (
              <WiseRouter 
                exact={route.exact}
                path={route.path} 
                key={route.name} 
                isAuthenticated={isAuthenticated}
                needsAuthentication={route.needsAuthentication} 
                needsAuthorisation={route.needsAuthorisation}
                routePermissions={route.permissions}
                userPermissions={permissions}
                redirectTo={route.redirectTo}
                defaultRedirect='/'
                component={route.component} 
                fallback={route.fallback} />
            ))}
            <Redirect from="*" to="/"/>
          </Switch>
        </Router>
      </div>
  );

}

Debug

if you set debug prop to true, every route you head on or you are redirected to will be consoled to your console.

{
  "exact": true,
  "path": "/users",
  "isAuthenticated": true,
  "needsAuthentication": true,
  "needsAuthorisation": true,
  "routePermissions": [
    "CAN_VIEW_USERS"
  ],
  "userPermissions": [
    "CAN_VIEW_USERS",
    "FOLLOW_USERS",
    "UNFOLLOW_USERS",
    "CAN_CREATE_CORPUS_TEXT",
    "CAN_CREATE_POSTS",
    "CAN_EDIT_POSTS",
    "CAN_DELETE_POSTS",
    "CAN_CREATE_PAGES",
    "CAN_EDIT_PAGES",
    "CAN_DELETE_PAGES"
  ],
  "redirectTo": null,
  "defaultRedirect": "/",
  "fallback": null,
  "component": {
    "compare": null,
    "displayName": "Connect(Users)"
  },
  "debug": true,
  "location": {
    "pathname": "/users",
    "search": "",
    "hash": "",
    "key": "j757ew"
  },
  "computedMatch": {
    "path": "/users",
    "url": "/users",
    "isExact": true,
    "params": {}
  }
}

New in v1.1.0

passRouteProps and isAuthorised props

I would like to highlight the two new props that have been added and why I think it may be useful for some of you as it has been for me.

passRouteProps Let's say a user wants the component to only be accessed by 'authenticated and authorised' users but they don't want to redirect user to any route nor they want to render a fallback component, but rather let the component handle what needs to be done itself. this is achieved by setting the passRouteProps to an array of values, and having redirectTo as a falsy value (default).

if the route or component a user is trying to access needs to be authorised, you have two props in play: routePermissions array['string'] and isAuthorised bool. If you don't have a permissions validation, you can pass in just an empty array which will be validated against user's permissions (that logically would be an empty array as well). if you only want to make sure the user is authorized through something generic as currentUser.is_admin or such, that's where you use isAuthorised, or if your app doesn't use authorisation at all, you can just set isAuthorised to true and pass in again routePermissions as an empty array.

An example of such a route would be something such as:

{
    path: '/staff',
    exact: true,
    name: 'StaffDashboard',
    component: StaffDashboard,
    needsAuthentication: true,
    needsAuthorisation: true,
    permissions: ['CAN_DELETE_USER', 'CAN_VIEW_STATS'],
    redirectTo: null,
    passRouteProps: [
      'needsAuthentication',
      'needsAuthorisation',
      'permissions', 
    ]
  },

As you can see above, the passRouteProps defines a set of the props that we want to pass to the StaffDashboard component accessed at /staff. The props needsAuthentication, needsAuthorisation, permissions will be available to the component just like any other props.

it is worth noting that passRouteProps is only available for your main component, not for fallback, redirectTo, or defaultRedirect components.

App.jsx

import React from 'react';
import { BrowserRouter as Router, Switch, Redirect } from "react-router-dom";
import WiseRouter from 'react-wise-router';
import Routes from './Routes'


/*

currentUser = {
  isAuthenticated: true,
  isAuthorised: true,
  permissions: ['CAN_DELETE_USER', 'CAN_VIEW_STATS', 'CAN_ACCESS_ACCOUNT', 'IS_SUPERUSER']
}

*/


function App(props) {

  const { permissions, isAuthenticated, isAuthorised } = props.currentUser;

  return (
      <div>
        <Router>
          <Switch>
            {Routes.map(route => (
              <WiseRouter 
                exact={route.exact}
                path={route.path} 
                key={route.name} 
                isAuthenticated={isAuthenticated}
                isAuthorised={isAuthorised}
                needsAuthentication={route.needsAuthentication} 
                needsAuthorisation={route.needsAuthorisation}
                routePermissions={route.permissions}
                userPermissions={permissions}
                passRouteProps={route.passRouteProps}
                redirectTo={route.redirectTo}
                defaultRedirect='/'
                component={route.component}  />
            ))}
            <Redirect from="*" to="/"/>
          </Switch>
        </Router>
      </div>
  );

}

on StaffDashboard.jsx:

export default function StaffDashboard(props) {

  const { needsAuthentication, 
    needsAuthorisation, permissions } = props;

  return (

  );
}

Now you can do what you want based on the props your recieved from your route.

We can even go as far as passing your user's state as well, such as: isAuthenticated, isAuthorised, currentUser, etc so your router could act as Context provider where you don't need to use something such as context or state selectors (as in Redux). It is currently not supportted, but if you'd like to have that, please DM on Github.

Github repository

https://github.com/MurphyAdam/react-wise-router