tinro is a highly declarative, very tiny (~3.4 Kb (1.3 Kb gzipped)), dependency free router for Svelte web applications.

• Just one component to declare routes in your app
• Links are just common native <a> elements
• History API, Hash-based, or in-memory navigation
• Simple nested routes
• Routes with parameters (/hello/:name)
• Redirects
• Fallbacks on any nested level
• Parsing query parameters (?x=42&hello=world&fruits=apple,banana,orange)
• Svelte's REPL compatible

• Install
• Getting started
• Nesting
• Links
• Redirects
• Fallbacks
• Route meta
  • url
  • pattern
  • match
  • from
  • query
  • params
  • breadcrumbs
• Parameters (Deprecated since 0.5.0)
• Navigation method
• API
• Recipes
  • Lazy loading
  • Transitions
  • Guarded routes
  • Scroll to top

Install tinro as a dev dependency in your Svelte project:

$ npm i -D tinro

tinro is very simple! It provides just one component — <Route>. A common app structure looks like this:

<script>
    import {Route} from 'tinro'; 
    import Contacts from './Contacts.svelte'; // <h1>Contacts</h1>
</script>

<nav>
    <a href="/">Home</a>
    <a href="/portfolio">Portfolio</a>
    <a href="/contacts">Contacts</a>
</nav>

<Route path="/"><h1>This is the main page</h1></Route>
<Route path="/portfolio/*">
    <Route path="/">
        <h1>Portfolio introduction</h1>
        <nav>
            <a href="/portfolio/sites">Sites</a> 
            <a href="/portfolio/photos">Photos</a>
        </nav>
    </Route>
    <Route path="/sites"><h1>Portfolio: Sites</h1></Route>
    <Route path="/photos"><h1>Portfolio: Photos</h1></Route>
</Route>
<Route path="/contacts"><Contacts /></Route>

See the example in action in Svelte's REPL

There are two types of routes you can declare in the <Route> component's path property:

Shows its content only when path matches the URL of the page exactly. You can't place a nested <Route> inside these components.

<Route path="/">...</Route>
<Route path="/page">...</Route>
<Route path="/page/subpage">...</Route>

<Route> components with a path property that ends with /* show their content when a part of the page's URL matches with the path before the /*. A nested <Route> can be placed inside components with a non-exact path only.

<Route path="/books/*">
    Books list:
    <Route path="/fiction">...</Route>
    <Route path="/drama">...</Route>
</Route>

The path property of a nested <Route> is relative to its parent. To see the Fiction category in the above example, you would point your browser to https://mysite.com/books/fiction.

Nested routes also work inside child components. So, we can rewrite the example this way:

<!-- Bookslist.svelte-->
...
Books list:
<Route path="/fiction">...</Route>
<Route path="/drama">...</Route>

<!-- App.svelte-->
...
<Route path="/books/*">
    <Bookslist/>
</Route>

Sometimes, you need to show only the first nested route from all those matched with a given URL. Use the firstmatch property on the parent Route:

<Route path="/user/*" firstmatch>

    <!-- Will be open when URL is /user/add -->
    <Route path="/add">Add new user</Route> 

    <!-- Will be open when URL is /user/alex or /user/bob, but not /user/add -->
    <Route path="/:username" let:meta>Show user {meta.params.username}'s profile</Route> 

</Route>

There is no special component for links. Just use native <a> elements. When the href attribute starts with a single / (like /mypage or just /), it will be treated as an internal link which will be matched with defined routes. Other cases do not affect the links' behavior.

All internal links will be passed into the tinro router. However, it is possible to prevent this by adding the tinro-ignore or data-tinro-ignore attributes:

<a href="/api/auth" tinro-ignore>Go to API page</a>

If you need to add the active class to links where the path corresponds to the current URL, use the active action from the tinro package:

<script>
    import {active} from 'tinro';
</script>   

<!-- Common usage:
     class `active` will be added when URL is '/page' or any relative path like '/page/sub/sub' -->
<a href="/page" use:active>Link</a>

<!-- Exact match:
     class `active` will be added only when URL exactly equals '/page'  (but NOT '/page/sub') -->
<a href="/page" use:active exact>Link</a>

<!-- Custom class:
    class `myactive` will be added if link is active -->
<a href="/page" use:active active-class="myactive">Link</a>

<!-- Valid HTML usage:
    if you prefer to have valid HTML use `data-` prefix -->
<a href="/page" use:active data-exact data-active-class="myactive">Link</a>

You can redirect the browser to any path by using the redirect property:

<!-- Exact redirect -->
<Route path="/noenter" redirect="/newurl"/>

<!-- Non-exact redirect will also work for any nested path -->
<Route path="/noenter/*" redirect="/newurl"/>

You can also redirect to a relative path — just write the new URL without / in front of it:

<!-- This will redirect to /subpage/newurl -->
<Route path="/subpage/*">
    <Route path="/" redirect="newurl"/>
</Route>

Routes with the fallback property show their content when no matched address was found. Fallbacks may be placed inside a non-exact <Route> only. Fallbacks bubble, so if there is no fallback on the current level, the router will try to find one on any parent levels. See the example:

<Route>  <!-- same as <Route path="/*"> -->
    <Route path="/">Root page</Route>
    <Route path="/page">Page</Route>
    <Route path="/sub1/*">
        <Route path="/subpage">Subpage1</Route>
    </Route>
    <Route path="/sub2/*">
        <Route path="/subpage">Subpage2</Route>
        <Route fallback>No subpage found</Route>
    </Route>
    <Route fallback>No page found</Route>
</Route>

<a href="/">...</a>               <!-- shows Root page -->
<a href="/page">...</a>           <!-- shows Page -->
<a href="/blah">...</a>           <!-- shows No page found -->
<a href="/sub1/subpage">...</a>   <!-- shows Subpage1 -->
<a href="/sub1/blah">...</a>      <!-- shows No page found -->
<a href="/sub1/blah/blah">...</a> <!-- shows No page found -->
<a href="/sub2/subpage">...</a>   <!-- shows Subpage2 -->
<a href="/sub2/blah">...</a>      <!-- shows No subpage found -->
<a href="/sub2/blah/blah">...</a> <!-- shows No subpage found -->

You can get useful meta data for each route by importing and calling meta from the tinro package.

<script>
    import {meta} from 'tinro';
    const route = meta();  
</script>

<h1>My URL is {route.url}!</h1>

<!-- If you need reactive updates, use it as a store -->
<h1>My URL is {$route.url}!</h1>

You can also get meta data with the let:meta directive:

<Route path="/hello" let:meta>
    <h1>My URL is {meta.url}!</h1>
</Route>

Current browser URL (includes query).

Example: /books/stanislaw_lem/page2?order=descend

The pattern of the route path, including parameter placeholders. It is a combination of the path properties of all parent routes.

Example: /books/:author

Part of the browser URL that is matched with the route pattern.

Example: /books/stanislaw_lem

If present, the value of the browser URL before navigation to the current page. Useful to make a back button, for example.

Example: /books/stanislaw_lem/page1?order=descend

Object containing keys/values from the browser URL query string (if present).

Example: {order: "descend"}

If the route pattern has parameters, their values will be in the meta.params object.

<!-- Example for URL "/books/stanislaw_lem/solaris"> -->
<Route path="/books/:author/*" let:meta>

    <!-- meta.params here {author:stanislaw_lem} -->
    Author: {meta.params.author}

    <Route path="/:title" let:meta>

        <!-- meta.params here {author:stanislaw_lem, title:solaris} -->
        Book: {meta.params.title}

    </Route>
</Route>

All parent routes that have a breadcrumb property will add a breadcrumb to the meta.breadcrumbs array. Each breadcrumb is an object with name and path fields.

<Route path="/*" breadcrumb="Home">
    <Route path="/portfolio" breadcrumb="My Portfolio" let:meta>
        <ul class="breadcrumbs">
        {#each meta.breadcrumbs as bc}
            <li><a href={bc.path}>{bc.name}</a></li>
        {/each}
        </ul>

        This is my portfolio
    </Route>
</Route>

! route.params and let:params are DEPRECATED since v.0.5.0. and will be deleted in future versions!

See meta.params section

By default, navigation uses the History API which allows you to have clean page URLs, although it needs some setup on the server side. Instead, you may choose to use hash or memory navigation methods. There is no need to change links or paths in your app, everything else will still work the same.

<!-- Root file of your project, ex. App.svelte -->
<script>
    import {Route,router} from 'tinro';

    router.mode.hash(); // enables hash navigation method

    // - OR -

    router.mode.memory(); // enables in-memory navigation method
</script>

<!-- Link will point browser to '/#/page/subpage' -->
<a href="/page/subpage">Subpage</a>

<!-- Route shows content when URL is '/#/page/subpage' -->
<Route path="/page/subpage">Subpage content</Route>

Note: default navigation method in non-browser environment or inside iframes is memory

When you use the History API and point the browser to the root path / (usually /index.html) all links and Routes will work properly. But when you start your app on any subpage, like /page/subpage, you will see the 404 Not found error. Because of this, you need to setup your server to point all requests to /index.html.

This is easy if you use the official Svelte template. Just open package.json and find this NPM script:

"start": "sirv public"

Replace it with this line:

"start": "sirv public --single"

Now, start your app with npm run dev and open a URL like https://localhost:5000/page/subpage. You should see the app page, instead of the "Not found" error.

For other servers you can read the following links: Nginx, Apache, Caddy

You can import the router object from the tinro package:

Programmatically change the URL of the current page.

Run it inside any Route component to get its meta data which includes:

• url - current browser URL (with query string)
• from - previous URL before navigation to current page (if present)
• pattern - route's path pattern, combination of all path properties of all parent Route components
• match - part of the the browser URL that is matched with pattern
• params - if pattern has placeholders, their values will be in this object
• query - if browser URL has a query string, there will be a parsed object
• breadcrumbs - all parent routes with the breadcrumb property will add an object with {name, path} to this array
• subscribe(func) - you can use this to subscribe to meta data changes. func will get an updated meta object each time the URL changes

The router object is a valid Svelte store, so you can subscribe to get the changing navigation data. func gets an object with page data:

• url - current browser URL (with query string)
• from - previous URL before navigation to current page (if present)
• path - current browser URL
• hash - the hash part of the URL, after # sign
• query - object, containing parsed query string

Note: you can use Svelte's auto-subscription to retrieve data from the router store:

<script>
    import {router} from 'tinro';
</script>

Current page URL is: {$router.path}

Run this in the app's root file to set the navigation method you need.

Deprecated. See router.meta instead.

tinro is not the most powerful router among all those available for Svelte applications. We prefer a smaller footprint in your bundles over having all possible features out of the box. But you can easily code some features yourself using the recipies below:

If you want to have code-splitting and load components only when that page is requested, make this little component:

<!-- Lazy.svelte-->
<script>
    export let component;
</script>

{#await component.then ? component : component()}
    Loading component...
{:then Cmp}
   <svelte:component this={Cmp.default} />
{/await}

And use it when you need a lazy loaded component in your routes:

<Route path="/lazypage">
    <Lazy component={()=>import('./mypage.svelte')}/>
        <!-- OR -->
    <Lazy component={import('./mypage.svelte')}/>      
</Route>

If you want a transiton when the path changes, create a component like this:

<!-- Transition.svelte -->
<script>
    import {router} from 'tinro';
    import {fade} from 'svelte/transition';
</script>

{#key $router.path}
    <div in:fade="{{ duration: 700}}">
        <slot></slot>
    </div>
{/key}

Then, put your routes inside the Transition component:

<Transition> 
    <Route path="/">...</Route>
    <Route path="/page1">...</Route>
    <Route path="/page2">...</Route>
</Transition>

You can protect routes from being loaded using only Svelte's logic blocks, like the {#if} statement:

{#if user.authed}
    <Route path="/profile">This is a private page...</Route>
{:else}
    <Route path="/profile"><a href="/login">Please sign in first</a></Route>
    <Route path="/login">This is the sign in form...</Route>
{/if}

You can also create a special guard component as shown in this example.

tinro doesn't control scrolling in your app, but sometimes you need to scroll to the top of the page after navigation. To do this, just add the router store subscription to your root component (ex. App.svelte). This way you can run any actions (not just scrolling) every time the URL changes.

import {router} from `tinro`;
router.subscribe( _ => window.scrollTo(0, 0));